The Winter Palace

The Winter Palace
By Eva Stachniak (440 pages)
Published by Batam
Bookish rating: 4

If you're a fan of royal intrigue but a smidge tired of Henry VIII and his merry wives, The Winter Palace delivers an entertaining story of Russia's (German-born) Catherine the Great's rise to power.

Told through the viewpoint of an orphaned palace spy, young Varvara, we see Catherine's story, and Varvara's story, too. This was a book club book, and some group members got miffed that the story was really Catherine's and thus told too distantly by Varvara, and they also argued that the relationship between the two women wasn't believable (for the record, I bought it as believable).

As I told the groupies, I didn't have much of a problem with these two (potential) flaws, and maybe it's the fact that I have so little time to read these days (5-month-old, 3-year-old, and a full-time job--need I say more?),  so temporary imaginative flights into imperial Russia with its sleighs and ornate gowns and spies were enjoyable enough for me to overlook possible shortcomings (and if this is the case, my literary criticism quality just plunged). Or, maybe I just disagree with them.

Overall, a good book. Yes, it gets a little aimless as we wait for the coup, and this novel being steeped in an actual royal coup means we have a lot of history to get through, which doesn't always lend itself to the most desirable plotting or pace. But the novel is written well, the language is lovely, and aside from some of the "then this happened" aspect of the history, I found The Winter Palace absorbing and worth reading.

So there.