I am a huge fan of Janet Fitch and had very much been looking forward to anything new coming from her. I was also very excited that this is historical fiction, as that is my go-to genre. The historical fiction component of this was actually very interesting. I have a bit of interest for the revolution era of Russia's history during Nicholas II's rule and following it. I felt this part rang true to the history and was well told, especially with the juxtaposition of the three friends. However, I was not able to finish this book. I found that I could not stand the main character. She was a teenager, yes, but she was unrealistic and unlikable. I may some day try to finish this as I do still enjoy Fitch's writing style, but I couldn't as of now.

I picked The Revolution of Marina M by Janet Finch based on the historical framework of the Russian Revolution and the narrative perspective of a young woman coming of age in this environment. Unfortunately, a unlikable and unsympathetic main character, graphic descriptions of a sixteen year old's sex life with multiple partners, and too many details overshadow the story of the history. This was not the book for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2018/01/the-revolution-of-marina-m.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

Great story - not crazy about the ending. Wish there had been a epilogue. WHAT HAPPENS. I learned so so so much about the Russian revolution. I had to look up a lot of the terminology, but it was super worth it. I now consider myself an expert. Ask me anything.

Marina, the daughter of St. Petersburg elites, is swept up in the Russian revolution. Aligning herself with poets, artists, and revolutionists, her life is upended as she discovers who she is and what she believes in.

This is a pretty long book. I mention this because I was really wrapped into the characters and felt invested in them. Then, the book abruptly end and left everything unfinished. This was an extreme let-down. The story itself was fascinating and the characters extremely realistic. It was very disappointing not to have a real ending to the book. Because of this, I have to rate an otherwise great book a 2 out of 5.

Was not able to start this length of a book during holiday season - my apologies

I really wanted to like this book. I love Janet Fitch--I think I've read <i>White Oleander</i> like five times. And I'm a Slavist. So I was so excited when I saw that Janet Fitch was writing a book about the Russian Revolution. However, this book was b-r-u-t-a-l. It might be the worst book I've read in years, and it pains me to say that given how much I like her work normally. I think the problem is that the book has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a romance story? A sweeping Russian epic about the Revolution? A character study? It ends up being an unsatisfying mess that defies logic. I also found the main character (Marina) to be wholly unlikable. The choices she made were so selfish and none of the characters in her life (save Avdokia) made sense. Secondary and tertiary characters flit in and out, and are never to be seen again. Why do we need the character of Varvara at all? Or Dunya?

I do admire the amount of research that Fitch put into the novel. That's the sole reason that I gave it two stars--it's incredibly detailed. I will say, that of all the books I've ever read about Russian literature or Russian history, this is the first one that involves a finger in the butt---so thanks for introducing me to a new aspect of Russian history?

I was so excited to read this book. I thought a story about a member of the Russian bourgeoisie joining the Russian Revolution would be so exciting! But it wasn't. Marina was NOT a likable character at all. She's extremely spoiled and selfish, and it seems she only supports the Revolution because her friends do. She never really seems to understand what the Revolution was about, and uses it as an excuse to hurt her parents more than anything. And then the story just rambles through weirdness...failed love affairs, a kidnapping, living with astronomers...the last third of the book, with its weird cult, was over the top ridiculous. I only kept reading because I figured I had already read 800-some pages, I might as well suffer through 200 more. This book is supposed to have a sequel, and I will NOT be reading it. Very disappointed.

This book is by one of my favorite authors. That said, it is a real departure for her. You must be invested in this
historical novel as it is 800 pages ! It is a type of coming of age story that takes place in the Russian revolution.
Too much emphasis on sexual awaking in my opinion, but likable characters. The author obviously did intensive
research for this book.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch was one of the first books I remember reading that had a huge impact on me. It was one of the first books I read that meant more to me than just a book I had to read for school, or a book that took me to another world that was full of life and happiness. It was dark, it had angst, it really resonated with me as a teen. So reading Fitch’s new book, The Revolution of Marina M was a little nostalgic for me. While I didn’t expect a comparison, I couldn’t help but hope I’d be just as transformed after reading it.

Sadly, this was a hard book for me to get into. It was very much reminiscent of classic Russian literature, which admittedly I always have a hard time reading; the beginning was so very heavy on Russian and political history, which isn’t usually what I gravitate towards, and I found I had to drag myself through the first few chapters while the scene was set. A lot of work must have gone into the research of this book; it was written beautifully and very rich, the historical aspects surrounding the Russian Revolution were very detailed and Fitch did a great job of building a story from this, but I had a really tough love/hate relationship with the book, especially in the beginning.

In terms of inspiring, revolutionary characters, I can’t say I liked Marina all that much in the start. That wasn’t because she wasn’t relateable, just the opposite, she was TOO relateable. Which is usually a good thing, but here, it limited me from liking and believing her because she seemed too much like a phony. She had revolutionary and bohemian intentions and aspirations, but she came from a bourgeois family who didn’t really know what it was like to be hungry, to be poor, to be the working class. Even when she abandoned that life and lived among the poets, a poet herself, I still didn’t fully believe it, still didn’t think she fully fit in, and I don’t think she fully believed that she did either.

This is wonderfully accurate and likely what a lot of people would have been like in that situation, however I started to feel somewhat annoyed with her flippant behaviour. She didn’t show any loyalty, she often just tried to find the situation that would benefit her most at the time without any real idea of what she was doing. It wasn’t until she was stripped fully of everything she knew, everything she thought she was, and horribly mistreated, that I finally felt more affection towards her. That likely said a lot more about me than the book, but also created an intriguing growth in the character which completely shifts the tone of the book.

This is the point where I stopped struggling and was able to fully embrace and enjoy the story. The politics were a bit more subdued and Marina’s story started to take center stage. I found this a lot more interesting, her dealing with the repercussions of the decisions she’s made, her struggling with her passions and her drive, her desires and her loyalty. This was touched upon previously but it was from that point on that you really saw the hard choices and the decisions she was making and where it was leading her. You saw everything she held close, her dignity and morals, thrown to the wayside. This was now about survival.

There was a lot of sex in this book; it wasn’t gratuitous but it was graphic and sometimes not so nice. Marina was trying to find her own revolution, to control her life, she was sexually empowered in the sense that she was aware of and embraced her own desires and wasn’t afraid to enjoy herself, but she made decisions without thinking of the consequences and this often landed her in the hands of powerfully political men (and women) who saw her as nothing more than an object to abuse in various ways. It was heartbreaking and hard to read sometimes, but also seemed to fit really well against the revolutionary background, giving that darkness to an already dark time.

The ending was anti-climactic. A few people have pointed out in other reviews that it ended abruptly because it was going to be continued in a sequel. This was disappointing for me. After reading 800+ pages, I was hoping for a bit more of a satisfied ending. I also felt that there wasn’t really much to follow up with and I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t read a sequel to this. I’ve spent my time with Marina, I’ve followed her through the trenches, I don’t think I see a need to follow her anywhere else.

I will admit that my knowledge of and interests in Russian history is limited, as is my familiarity with Russian literature, but The Revolution of Marina M was on par with the little that I do know and was a very in-depth, dark, somewhat cold tale of love, loss and the revolution.​

Mostly, I was bored by this book and daunted by the length out of continuing it.

I have always been interested in the Russian revolution and I love this author. Her WHITE OLEANDER is a book I still think of. I was a bit overwhelmed when I saw on my Kindle that this was a 16 and some hour book, I thought...OH NO! Getting started was a bit difficult, but once I got into it, I could not put it down. I would love to know how Ms. Fitch came up with the idea of this tome, and I wonder what kind of research she did for it. It was a great great read! I fell in love with Marina, the heroine, and I do believe life with the Bolsheviks was as bad and mean as Ms. Fitch describes. The black market, everyone out for a dime, and the starvation...horrible. what I did not get (spoiler alert) was the entire ending regarding her Mother and what seems like a George Ivanovich Gurdijeff character...honestly, I thought that part of the book came out of nowhere...It was simply odd..But I did love this book! Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company publishers for the perusal for an honest review. I cannot imagine how many years Ms. Fitch was working on this book. It truly was wonderful!

For the majority of this book, it was well on the way to 4 or even 5 stars. It was just incredibly written. I'm sure some people would say it was overly detailed, but I'd disagree. The writing was vivid rather than dry, and I found myself comparing it a bit to Ken Follett. Marina is uniquely placed as a character to get a larger picture of the Revolution, since she's the daughter of a bourgeois family, a poetry-writing intellectual who quits home to live in squalor with workers, and the lover of a soldier at the front of the world conflict. She was also one of the most wonderfully drawn characters I've ever read in historical fiction. I felt like she was a friend who I knew well and who I was living alongside through the years of revolution. Truly, truly a great book. Unfortunately, the last 50-100 pages just took the strangest turn and jarred me out of the narrative - it just didn't seem to fit. I think I kind of understood what Fitch was trying to do, but I just don't think it worked. Still, I would definitely recommend this excellent work of historical fiction despite its uneven ending. The journey is incredibly satisfying, even if the destination is not.

This is the fascinating fictional story of Marina Makarova as told in her own narrative, starting when she was a young girl of almost 16 in Petrograd. It starts around the time of the birth of the Workers Revolution and World War I in 1916 until 1919. She is a member of the hated bourgeois class and is torn by her loyalty to her family and her compassion for the working class. Her life takes many twists and turns. She is obsessed with her boyhood boyfriend whom she cannot stay away from even at the threat of danger. This passion leads her into life threatening situations. She finally realizes that truth and takes command of her life as she realizes that the people in her family are not what she grew up believing.

I love the author’s descriptions of events and people. They are vivid and captivating. You feel the panic and excitement at the labor rallies and can see in your mind’s eye, what Marina’s lover looks like. There is a myriad of subordinate characters that give the story depth. Each has their own story to tell and all are well defined. My only complaint is that the ending was anticlimactic.

This is the first novel that I have read by Janet Fitch and I will definitely read another. The story is fast moving and keeps you turning pages. I would recommend this book for young adult to adult readers for the mature subject matter.

A beautiful story about a remarkable woman living through and being part of history. Beautifully written.

My younger self looks up. She senses me there in the room, a vague but troubling presence, I swear she catches a glimpse of me in the windows reflection- the woman from the future, neither young nor old, bathed in grief and compromise, wearing her own two eyes. A shudder passes through her as a draft.

One of my favorite books of all time is White Oleander by Janet Fitch, which I intend to review and post here, as I read it recently again. For now, it’s time to finally post my review. With this, her fresh new novel, the reader gets inside the mind of Marina Makarova, a privileged young woman who wants to free herself from the demands of polite society. History is going to grant her wish for freedom, poetry and love but on the precipice of becoming a woman, everything she imagines as adventurous and beautiful will be anything but.

Ripe for the picking, seduced by poetry of the moment, to young Marina, the Russian revolution goes against everything her family stands for, and it beckons to her young, wild heart. Headstrong to a fault, first she is all Kolya’s Shurov’s and in losing her innocence wants to shed the role of ‘well bred school girl.’ He has stirred her passions, opened her to the erotic. Where her family is loyal to country, Marina is concerned about the starving workers, but doesn’t really notice how far she is from ever understanding such a life. The first dissension between the lovers, the question of honor, and the reality of dying for a cause one doesn’t believe in takes root. Kolya returns to his regiment, Mina soothes her but it’s the fire in her friend Varvara that changes her fate. Witness to massacre, the rise of mutiny, and the start of revolution Marina is entrenched in the changing world. Tying herself to the threat of danger in Varvara cannot be helped and her friend won’t let her flirt with an idea, one is either all in or out.

Marina falls in with poets, and Gena Kuriakin in particular. To think that as she lived in another world, and never noticed him nor his group of poets, how much of the times she had truly been cut off from in her cushy place. She and her family, everything Gena would despise, the shame of it all. Marina is awakening, but she is led every which way, sadly more by her heart than her head, still cursed by the stupidity of youth and naivete. Beside Gena the reality of poverty shocks her with a death, and leads to her father’s fury. ” All those years of care and you throw yourself away with both hands.” Though it’s an old story, a young woman growing out from under her father’s vision of her as virginal, with the country going to war with it’s sisters and brothers, overthrowing one’s own family can be fatal. There are many times the reader is irritated by her carelessness too. Marina has far more choices than the others, whose fights she longs to shoulder as her own. Naturally, her father is just as wrong, having faith in more ‘honorable’ men who would and have soiled her as much as a ‘hooligan’ would. Her gentle brother Seryozha is forced into a life like their elder brother Volodya, an officer away and fighting. Though he is more an artist than a fighter, it could make a man of him yet, or see him to an early grave, and for her father’s belief in honor, she is horrified to see her beloved youngest brother sacrificed. As much as she no longer believes in the war, she has blinders when it comes to those without privilege. When discussing Keats with Lyuda, when she is sent away, “He doesn’t believe in the war.” Lyuda tells her ” Who does, it’s just our lot can’t get away with it.” Throughout the novel, she is exposed because as much as she has fight in her blood, she isn’t suffering the way the workers and peasants do, bowed by the work they must do to keep the likes of her fat and fed. She is still playing a part, until grief becomes reality.

She betrays everyone, and by her own hand loses everything for the Bolsheviks, for love. The best moments happen when women wiser than her laugh at her. Because she really doesn’t know half as much about life and men as they do. On page 264, the women act as a mirror and it’s my favorite moment of clarity for Marina, who has spent so much time thinking herself separate from all the other doomed women. She wanted life, and her it is in all it’s horrifying glory.

Marina returns to find her mother, to save her, even while having aided in bringing down her life. “People hate the bourgeoisie, period.” Her mother says, and it really is a country of peasants done with having the dainty feet of the rich pining them down. I don’t know nearly enough about Russian history, I’ve read books, I’ve listened to different elders in my family well schooled in European history and still… I was learning as I went along. Starvation, poverty, spilled blood, honor and loyalty verses change, the reader gets to be a fly on the corpse of history for a time. Marina is frustrating, because I am reading her coming of age when I myself am older and therefore her green ideas seem so far away and yet, she is perfectly written because of those youthful flaws.

Part V is my favorite, elders, insect eaters, scientists, it’s such a peculiar welcome journey. “In any Earthly Idyll, time and events will invariably intrude’ and thus happens while reading this book of 804 pages. How does Janet Fitch carry such a story and keep it going? Marina is many people in every incident of her life, as we all are. She will not get through her changing country without blood on her own hands. There are lulls, but I kept reading, I wanted to know how it all turned out. The last half of the novel is a strange, dreamlike return to home, a sort of Ionian spell and also an explanation in some ways of why people give up their power and chose to be acolytes to religions, rules, ideas or a leader. I’ll leave you with that.

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Marina Makarova is the sixteen year old daughter of a Russian bourgeoisie official living in luxury on the eve of the Russian Revolution. The tumultuous events of the revolution is the beginning of a tumultuous period in Marina's life. During the three year span of 1917-1919, a lot of changes occurred in Russia which is reflected in the events of Marina's life in this historical novel about this daughter of the bourgeoisie. While the circumstances of Marina's life does change throughout the novel, in many ways she's the same, wide-eyed school girl that she was when the novel began. Your enjoyment of the novel will very well depend on whether you could tolerate Marina, who often comes across as very unlikable and bratty throughout. It gets to the point that even the other characters point out how mercurial she could be when she pops in and out of the other characters' lives, especially toward the end of this very long novel. The other characters are not much more likable than Marina which makes it hard to identify with any one of the many characters that come in and out of the narrative. Fitch's research into the Russian Revolution, especially how it effected everyday Russian citizens of all classes is impeccable but those expecting a straightforward novel of the effects of the Russian Revolution from the point of a view of a bourgeois individual who gets caught up in its effects will be disappointed since as you read on this book becomes a variation of the "Perils of Pauline" as Marina gets herself into ever more absurd situations. The description of the despair faced by Russian workers and peasants due to the broken promises of the revolution is the novel's strength. That could have been the basis of a compelling novel, instead what we get is an overly long "woman in peril" novel.

Historical fiction about the Russian Revolution told from the point of view of an upper middle class, teenage girl. I would have appreciated a little more detail, but the author got names and dates right.

The research Janet Fitch must have done to write this extraordinary tale is just amazing. The novel follows the life of Marina Makarova for roughly 3 years. She starts out as a hopeful 16 year girl full of poetry and promise for revolutionary Russia. Gradually she gets caught up in revolution and post Tsarist life. She transforms from a bourgeois maiden to a Bolshevik spy, to dutiful daughter, and finally survivor. She has to survive at any cost and the trials and tribulations she goes through are nothing short of astonishing.

The novel is long but wonderful. I thought it was interesting that the author choose this time period. There seems to be a saturation of WWII novels in the market lately and this was a refreshing change of pace. Fitch is able to capture the feelings of post revolutionary Russia and transport the reader to Petrograd. She paints such a picture of Russia, that you almost feel as if you are there. While Marina is not always likable and certainly makes a lot of mistakes, you never the less root for her and feel for her. This is a testament to Janet Fitch's beautiful writing.

It was interesting to see how Fitch was able to show Marina's progression from devoted revolutionary with hopes for a better future to the demoralizing realization that nothing really changes, the Bolsheviks are the new ruling class. As she moves through the stages of true believer to dejected lowly citizen you can't help but feel for those who actually lived this life. An accurate description of life in revolutionary Russia I believe. Historically speaking, this novel felt spot on. I highly recommend for anyone who loves historical fiction, Russian lit or just a great story. Thanks to NetGalley for providing and ARC for review.

Communism never took human nature into account, which meant that the workers’ paradise was always going to be just a pipe dream. Of course, in the Russia of 1917, the Bolsheviks were willing to go to any lengths to force the rest of their countrymen to try to create that paradise. For people like Marina Makarova, protagonist of Janet Fitch’s The Revolution of Marina M., this meant that they had to shift for themselves as best they could while trying to get around the increasingly complex and discriminatory bureaucracy. Throughout the book, Marina encounters person after person who is only out for themselves. It is the worst place at the worst time for a passionate, naive girl who doesn’t know what she wants and is used to being cared for by servants.

After a prologue that takes away some of the tension by revealing that she survives and escapes the nascent Soviet Union, we meet 16-year-old, St. Petersburg native Marina at a party for her aristocratic set early in 1917. She is struggling with her strong physical attraction for Kolya while also flirting with Communism via her friendship with the sharp-tongued Varvara. She doesn’t have any political convictions herself, but she empathizes with the poor. Her parents seem willing to let Marina and Kolya flirt, they are increasingly angry with her for her slumming with Varvara and the teeming millions of the city.

The Revolution of Marina M. covers 1917 through 1919. Marina is caught more than once by the rapidly developing violence of the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war. She might have been able to keep her head down once she moves in with an anarchic group of Futurist poets, but she’s caught between jealous lovers, revolutionary friends, and aristocratic, anti-Bolshevik parents. The other people in her life never seem to show their best sides when Marina’s life is in peril. Granted, it’s hard to stick one’s neck out when the price might be starvation, imprisonment, or execution. On top of this, in Marina’s case, is the fact that most of the people in her life grow exasperated with her fickle heart and ineptitude. Something about Marina brings out the worst in a lot of people and they’re reluctant to do much for her.

Feb_1917
Russian revolutionaries in 1917
(Image via Wikicommons)
In spite of all this, Marina somehow soldiers on. She survives hunger, kidnapping and rape, imprisonment, and treat of summary execution. Because of her attachment to her parents and her friends, she never becomes a devoted revolutionary. She does become a devoted survivor, though never in a way that stretched my credulity. What I did have a hard time believing was the strange ending sequence of the novel, when Marina falls in with a group of people practicing some kind of transcendentalist hooey. I could see this section as an internal revolution for our protagonist, in which she finally learns to stop relying on others to bail her out. But it’s so weird that the last 100+ pages just didn’t work for me. (The ending also leaves a big question unanswered.)

The Revolution of Marina M. is probably too long. It’s definitely too histrionic. But I’ll admit that I was hooked for most of it. By the time I got to the part I didn’t like, I was so close to the end I couldn’t quit. What I liked most about this book was the way that Fitch brought 1917 St. Petersburg back to life through the eyes of a bewildered girl. I imagine that Marina’s experience of politics was a common one; unlike dedicated Communists, most of what happened politically in those years seemed like one unexpected blow after another. Fitch has a deft hand with the research. So while The Revolution of Marina M. is definitely an imperfect book, it does have some things to recommend it to readers who are willing to put up with a heavy dose of melodrama in their historical fiction.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 7 November 2017.

This ended up being much more sophisticated, complex, and unpredictable than I expected, and I mean that as a compliment. The use of a passionate character/narrator to walk us through a passionate time—the Russian revolution—works perfectly, and the language was gorgeous without being overblown. While Marina experienced a huge gamut of events in the space of several years, because the writing and the characters were so well limned it was easy to suspend disbelief that one person would have seen and done all of this. My only critique is that the book seemed to run out of steam by the end. Perhaps some of the events could have been compressed or the details pruned. But I'm definitely eager to read the sequel.