Crime thriller set in AMSTERDAM
An engrossing novel set mainly in Russia
5th October 2018
The Lost Daughter by Gill Paul, an engrossing novel set mainly in Russia across the 20th Century.
Gill Paul is an author who can formulate good and very readable stories and this is no exception.
There has always been debate whether any of the Romanov children survived the execution in 1918. This is the fictional story of Maria Romanova, who was the first child to accompany her parents to Ekaterinburg to while away their final months under house arrest. The other children followed on a little later.
Maria seems a rambunctious young woman who is charming and friendly to some of the guards who enforce her family’s incarceration, and these friendships are the foundation for the story as it builds. As we accompany her through the murder of her family (she survives but only just) and on into her mature years as a mother through WW2 and the Soviet hard-line Communist era, she encounters further loss. The changes that befall Russia and its people are sharply depicted. But, despite harsh conditions, her determination and stoicism win through.
Gill and TF’s Tina
Forward to Australia and the 1970s, Val, daughter of a Chinese woman and an extremely abusive Russian father (from whom she has been estranged for a good 17 years) is extricating herself from an abusive marital relationship with Tony. Those were the days when women had little or no rights and as Val and her daughter Nicole finally make the break, she discovers that there is little money and she will have to make do. She hears from her mother who is back in China and also discovers that her father is nearing death. Life is turning incredibly tumultuous.
How the two stories dovetail is of course at the heart of the novel.
It is an engrossing novel that is centred largely in Russia but also diverts to China and Australia. I think the premise of the Romanov deaths is an extremely interesting one and there remain many unanswered questions, even to this day. Are there any survivors and off spring? What really happened to the Amber Room in the Romanov’s Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo (looted by the Germans during WW2, its current whereabouts still remain a mystery). Anna Anderson, for example, who died in 1984 always maintained that she was Maria’s sister, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia…..(DNA however conclusively proved that she was not related to the Romanovs).
I felt a little dubious that Westerners – visiting Russia during the peak of the harsh Communist era, minder in tow, surveillance at every turn, the Cold War simmering – would be able to traverse the country at will (especially with a Fabergé box in tow) but no matter, I thoroughly enjoyed the read.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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Good review, and as a temporary American resident of the former USSR during Cold War days when I was married to a diplomat and had dual citizenship, I can attest to difficulties of travel, especially when it wasn’t plane travel: we were taken off a bus once, and never allowed to take trains, certainly not drive. The reason it appeared in retrospect wasn’t fear of our spying in traditional sense but of seeing how poor and backward the countryside was. My novella “Grisha the Scrivener” follows a dissident out of the gulag to the independence of Georgia where he returns after the dissolution of the USSR. I always have interest in things Russian, so appreciate review.
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Thank you so much for leaving your informed thoughts – E Berlin/Germany was very much a show piece, but behind the scenes it was very difficult… I have been followed on occasion and freedom of movement for foreigners was strictly controlled.
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