Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Beekeeper of Aleppo.
I was granted eARC access to The Memory Keeper of Kyiv by Erin Litteken by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
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About the Book
The Memory Keeper of Kyiv
by Erin Litteken
Publishing 16 May 2022
Boldwood Books
Genre: Historical Fiction
Page Count: 373
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Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Beekeeper of Aleppo.
In the 1930s, Stalin’s activists marched through the Soviet Union, espousing the greatness of collective farming. It was the first step in creating a man-made famine that, in Ukraine, stole almost 4 million lives. Inspired by the history the world forgot, and the Russian government denies, Erin Litteken reimagines their story.
In 1929, Katya is 16 years old, surrounded by family and in love with the boy next door. When Stalin’s activists arrive in her village, it’s just a few, a little pressure to join the collective. But soon neighbors disappear, those who speak out are never seen again and every new day is uncertain.
Resistance has a price, and as desperate hunger grips the countryside, survival seems more a dream than a possibility. But, even in the darkest times, love beckons.
Seventy years later, a young widow discovers her grandmother’s journal, one that will reveal the long-buried secrets of her family’s haunted past.
This is a story of the resilience of the human spirit, the love that sees us through our darkest hours and the true horror of what happened during the Holodomor.
“I never imagined the release of my novel on a past oppression of the Ukrainian people would coincide with such a parallel tragedy.” Erin Litteken
A share of proceeds will be donated to DEC’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
May we never forget, lest history repeat itself.
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My Review
My Rating: 4 Stars
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The Memory Keeper of Kyiv is a classic split-timeline story of women two generations apart in the same family experiencing losses and tragedy, and how the younger discovering this about the elder changes their relationship and the younger woman’s outlook on the future. In this case, the women are Ukrainian. The elder woman’s portion of the story, told mostly through diary entries, takes place in 1929 and the early 1930s during Stalin’s oppression of the country in the midst of a global depression, while the younger woman’s story takes place in 2004 near the beginning of the country’s Orange Revolution.
What I loved about this book was how much I connected with all of the characters, but young Katya in the journals in particular. These women felt real, fully formed, and compelling, and I just wanted to hold them all and console them during the strings of tragedies they were living through. What I didn’t love so much was that the book doesn’t follow its own rules for looking into the past. We’re supposed to understand that this at least starts exclusively as journal entries, but we get a whole lot of journal content before our 2004 character begins to get translations (as she doesn’t speak/read the correct language herself.)
Overall my impression is that this book is well written and that those who enjoy this variety of historical fiction will eat it up. With that said, strip away the specifics of the setting (Ukraine in 1929/1930 and 2004) and this book reads exactly the same as many other grandchild understands their grandparents better after hearing about their past experiences that connect to the present sort of novels I’ve read before. I think this book will likely receive a little more interest from readers outside of the genre readership just because of the release timing given what’s taking place in Ukraine right now and I do think this is a great book to potentially grab more readers for the genre, so that’s a big plus!
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Finding a journal like that would be incredible; I think I would really enjoy reading this and get into the history aspect of it. Thanks for the review!