I have just finished reading Adrienne Sharp's The True Memoirs of Little K, about Mathilde Kschessinska. It sounds like a biography but it is indeed a novel. Mathilde was the mistress of the future Nicholas II beginning when she was 17 and newly graduated from St Petersburg Imperial Ballet School, for the 3 years ending when married Alexandria, but their friendship lasted a life time. The facts seem to bear this out. She was made prima ballerina assoluta in 1896, and she acquired a great deal of valuable property over the next 20 years which Ms. Sharpe suggests is evidence of the Czar continuing patronage. True or not her influence over the ballet went on long after the affair was thought to have ended. It is told in first person and it works in this case, I found it fascinating. The 100 year old Mathilde tells her story and says the biography she wrote in 1954 is just fiction and lies. Now at the end of her life she needs to tell her son the whole truth. So begins her story
I am no expert on the Russian Revolution or the Romanovs, it is true she was a known mistress to the Czar, he didnt have many. She was also the lover to two Grand Dukes, but there is no evidence that her son Vova was Nikis son, he could have also been the son of her lover at the time the Grand Duke Sergi Mikhailovich a first cousin to Czar Nicolas II. The Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich also a first cousin of the Czar was her lover as well, and years later became her husband in exile. It is a plausible story and that is why I think it works so well. The research for this novel must have been immense and I am always happy when an author really knows the subject and conveys the time period so well. Mathilde is unapologetic how she lives her life, the dancers of the Imperial Ballet expected to become mistresses to powerful men, why shouldnt she be the Czars mistress as well as a Prima Ballerina, and amass a fortune? Ms. Sharpe explains that the dancers of the Imperial Ballet where servants of the Czar I realize just how totally the common people were owned and used by the powers that be. There is so much more to this story that I cannot adequately convey. The devotion of Nicolas to Alexandria, the politics of the ballet, and court, the mind boggling opulence of the time.
This is the kind of book I love to read. The one that sets me on a voyage of discovery; I have already investigated getting my hands on a copy of her memoirs the one she wrote in 1954, the memoirs are in the libraries of several universities in my area. There are also a couple of other books on her life so I will have to acquire them. I think that Sharpe did a great job and, I give this book a strong 4 stars.
I am no expert on the Russian Revolution or the Romanovs, it is true she was a known mistress to the Czar, he didnt have many. She was also the lover to two Grand Dukes, but there is no evidence that her son Vova was Nikis son, he could have also been the son of her lover at the time the Grand Duke Sergi Mikhailovich a first cousin to Czar Nicolas II. The Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich also a first cousin of the Czar was her lover as well, and years later became her husband in exile. It is a plausible story and that is why I think it works so well. The research for this novel must have been immense and I am always happy when an author really knows the subject and conveys the time period so well. Mathilde is unapologetic how she lives her life, the dancers of the Imperial Ballet expected to become mistresses to powerful men, why shouldnt she be the Czars mistress as well as a Prima Ballerina, and amass a fortune? Ms. Sharpe explains that the dancers of the Imperial Ballet where servants of the Czar I realize just how totally the common people were owned and used by the powers that be. There is so much more to this story that I cannot adequately convey. The devotion of Nicolas to Alexandria, the politics of the ballet, and court, the mind boggling opulence of the time.
This is the kind of book I love to read. The one that sets me on a voyage of discovery; I have already investigated getting my hands on a copy of her memoirs the one she wrote in 1954, the memoirs are in the libraries of several universities in my area. There are also a couple of other books on her life so I will have to acquire them. I think that Sharpe did a great job and, I give this book a strong 4 stars.
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