The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport

from goodreads

2 stars

Well I think life is finally going to settle down. I will hopefully get more reading done than I have in the past few weeks and my schedule will be as such that I can be more consistent with my reviews. And why is this? I had my baby! YEA!!! We had a boy and he will be known in my blogging world as Mr. S.

It will be interesting to discover the differences between the girls and this boy. I am so used to dresses and pink and sparkles and dolls it will be cool to discover the boy side of the world. So far he does much the same as the girls or any other baby. He eats, poops and sleeps. Ah the life of a new born.

Synopsis

This is a look at the lives of the daughters of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. It gives background on their parents lives, especially their mother and also looks a bit at Russian society during their life.

My Thoughts

This book was not what I was expecting or hoping for. I was expecting more information on the girls to really get a sense of who they were. Instead there were lots of names, lots of discussion surrounding the tsarina's health, and basically the same information being toted around about them, how they were simple, naive and secluded.

I know that information about the sisters, especially primary sources, would be harder to come by as their journals and letters would have been destroyed or lost or perhaps were incomplete, but I was still hoping for more of a complete picture. Instead of being the focus of the book, as the title would seem to indicate, the Romanov Sisters seemed to be in the background of their own story and not the star. So much attention was given to their brother and his ailments, their parents and others. I think I know more about them then the sisters.

Perhaps if I knew more about the time period and more about Russian history during the war and revolution I might have appreciated any new information that Rappaport found out about the sisters. But, as a newbie I didn't know what was already common knowledge and what was ground breaking so couldn't appreciate it.

I also found that the ending of the book was rather fast. The last few chapters were actually interesting and dealt with the time that they were under house arrest before their execution. I understand that the author has written a book that deals with their last days in detail, and thus, didn't want to go into the same detail in this book. But it would have nice to have a bit more than what she gave. One second they were in a new place, the next paragraph they were being lead to a basement and were killed. For a slow moving narrative, this chain of events was abrupt and quick and left me with a sense of "what just happened?"

On the whole this book does not give history or biographies a great name. While the subject matter should have been interesting, the delivery was not there. I probably would have stopped reading it if it wasn't for book club and if I didn't have the hope of perhaps learning something more, something interesting.

I do appreciate the tragedy of their lives. I wish that they could have lived more. It is such a tragic and sad way to end your life. I guess that is what will remain with me from this book. The sense of tragic loss. And loss that could have been avoided perhaps if their parents and those around them could have gotten out of their old ways of doing things and seen how the world was changing. It is sad.