Winter Garden
By Author: Kristin Hannah
The Seasoned Readers Book Club graded this book with an A+.
Several of the women in our Seasoned Readers Book Club agreed it was a slow start getting into the story. But once the fairy tale started to unfold, and you knew it wasnt just a fairy tale, it gets you hooked. How can a woman ever really know her mother when the mother is cold and distant all of her life? This heartbreaking novel displays the delicate nature of the mother-daughter bond. As children, the only connection between two sisters and their mother was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from his daughters. Get their mother to tell them the fairy tale one last time and completely.
Meredith and Nina are together with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, after the fathers death, offers no comfort to her daughters. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anyas life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Through telling of the fairy tale, that wasnt a fairy tale, they begin to see their mother in a new light. Starving, trying to care for two children as her husband, the prince, is off at war, and fleeing when one child becomes ill and being torn apart forever, the fairy tale goes beyond the happy to the utterly terrorizing. The story alternates between the past and present, telling their mothers life, and a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are. Through the telling the walls begin to tumble between them.
All of us felt the same about this story. It is so horrifying to think she could have survived. And we all asked what we would do under those circumstances. But more we asked why she, or even her husband, waited all those years to seek counseling for her to come out of a post stress syndrome self-inflicted semi-comatose state she had lived all the years her two daughters were growing up. Was he afraid the memory of the prince would diminish his role in her life? Was the past too ugly to look at in the light of day? Yet you know she was still living it everyday in her head. It was absconding with her true life. It was a tragedy those girls had to grow up without their mother whole which could have likely been accomplished with the right therapy.
All in all we enjoyed the book with all of its sadness and the healing that comes with the truth exposed.
By Author: Kristin Hannah
The Seasoned Readers Book Club graded this book with an A+.
Several of the women in our Seasoned Readers Book Club agreed it was a slow start getting into the story. But once the fairy tale started to unfold, and you knew it wasnt just a fairy tale, it gets you hooked. How can a woman ever really know her mother when the mother is cold and distant all of her life? This heartbreaking novel displays the delicate nature of the mother-daughter bond. As children, the only connection between two sisters and their mother was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from his daughters. Get their mother to tell them the fairy tale one last time and completely.
Meredith and Nina are together with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, after the fathers death, offers no comfort to her daughters. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anyas life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Through telling of the fairy tale, that wasnt a fairy tale, they begin to see their mother in a new light. Starving, trying to care for two children as her husband, the prince, is off at war, and fleeing when one child becomes ill and being torn apart forever, the fairy tale goes beyond the happy to the utterly terrorizing. The story alternates between the past and present, telling their mothers life, and a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are. Through the telling the walls begin to tumble between them.
All of us felt the same about this story. It is so horrifying to think she could have survived. And we all asked what we would do under those circumstances. But more we asked why she, or even her husband, waited all those years to seek counseling for her to come out of a post stress syndrome self-inflicted semi-comatose state she had lived all the years her two daughters were growing up. Was he afraid the memory of the prince would diminish his role in her life? Was the past too ugly to look at in the light of day? Yet you know she was still living it everyday in her head. It was absconding with her true life. It was a tragedy those girls had to grow up without their mother whole which could have likely been accomplished with the right therapy.
All in all we enjoyed the book with all of its sadness and the healing that comes with the truth exposed.
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