Scan barcode
A review by stevienlcf
Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison
4.0
Kathryn Harrison brings a fresh perspective to familiar history by scrupulously and sensuously retelling the end of the Russian monarchy through the eyes of Masha Rasputin, the 18 year old daughter of the peasant mystic healer from Siberia,Grigory Rasputin. After the "mad monk" was brutally murdered amidst rumors of his demonic power over Russia's fate, Masha and her younger sister become wards of Tsar Nikolay and his family. The tsarina believes that Masha can, like her father, preserve the health of her beloved Alyosha, a hemophiliac.
While the royal family and its retainers are under house arrest, Masha invents stories to amuse the ailing Alyosha. They spin stories both real and imagined about the courtship of Nikolay and Alexandra, who were ill-suited for the demands of public life. With a political crisis looming, the pair are hastily married a mere 18 days after Tsar Alexander's death. Immediately after the wedding, it became clear that "the two were doomed to always do wrong no matter how pure their intent." Masha reveals that her father suffered unrelenting grief after the death of his first infant son, and found himself in a monastary where the abbot explained that his life would be entertwined with Russia's rulers, and that he would die a martyr. Despite the fact that he was unwashed and illiterate, Rasputin seduced numerous women and was a proficient healer, eventually bringing him to the attention of Alexandra who had been "bargaining" with God to not take her bleeding son.
When the Tsar and his family are transported to Tobolsk in Siberia, purportedly for their own safety (although the isolation made it impossible for loyal royalists to free them) Masha wanders throughout Europe with with her husband, the "charlatain" Boris. Rasputin had wed Masha to Boris before Rasputin's murder as he foretold that Russia would descend into civil war and he thought that Boris could help Masha escape the country. Several years after the tsar and his family are executed, Masha, who is now performing as a horseback acrobat and a lion tamer in circuses around the world, receives delivery of the journal that Alyosha kept the moths before he and his family were executed.
A tender new perspective on familiar historical events.
While the royal family and its retainers are under house arrest, Masha invents stories to amuse the ailing Alyosha. They spin stories both real and imagined about the courtship of Nikolay and Alexandra, who were ill-suited for the demands of public life. With a political crisis looming, the pair are hastily married a mere 18 days after Tsar Alexander's death. Immediately after the wedding, it became clear that "the two were doomed to always do wrong no matter how pure their intent." Masha reveals that her father suffered unrelenting grief after the death of his first infant son, and found himself in a monastary where the abbot explained that his life would be entertwined with Russia's rulers, and that he would die a martyr. Despite the fact that he was unwashed and illiterate, Rasputin seduced numerous women and was a proficient healer, eventually bringing him to the attention of Alexandra who had been "bargaining" with God to not take her bleeding son.
When the Tsar and his family are transported to Tobolsk in Siberia, purportedly for their own safety (although the isolation made it impossible for loyal royalists to free them) Masha wanders throughout Europe with with her husband, the "charlatain" Boris. Rasputin had wed Masha to Boris before Rasputin's murder as he foretold that Russia would descend into civil war and he thought that Boris could help Masha escape the country. Several years after the tsar and his family are executed, Masha, who is now performing as a horseback acrobat and a lion tamer in circuses around the world, receives delivery of the journal that Alyosha kept the moths before he and his family were executed.
A tender new perspective on familiar historical events.