I am a huge fan of historical fiction, especially when it’s about a time, place or person I know little to nothing about. The Red Daughter covers Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, so it fit the bill.

The book purports to be a collection of excerpts from her private journals, letters and Editor’s Notes, written by Peter Horvath, the lawyer who helped her reach the US.

The chapters acting as her journal entries look back at her life starting with her memories of her mother’s suicide and the difficult relationship she had with her father. But I had to question if this were truly a journal, would the conversations have been recorded in detail? The book rings more true when Svetlana is just sharing her thoughts, whether about her father, Mother Russia, communism, her new adoptive country, living in exile or her children.

It’s hard to know what to make of Svetlana. She leaves Russia, her children ages 16 and 21, behind, with no warning. She thinks it’s for their own good. But what would they feel or believe? And her willingness to rush into a marriage after only a few weeks. This isn’t a woman I could really relate to or feel sympathy for.

Peter, as the editor, brings his side of the story to light. He and Svetlana had a complicated relationship starting when they presented themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Staehelin to get her to the States.

The writing is lush. “There is a kind of drunkenness one finds only in Russia. The Irish don’t know it, the French, the Greeks. An ecstasy of melancholy. The oldest lament in the world. A sadness that has no limits and somis very close to joy, but never reaches it. Joy’s dark cousin.”

Unfortunately, the pace of the book is not consistent and there are times it positively drags. I just was not interested in her affair. And again, if this book was based on her journals, shouldn’t there have at least been more of her thoughts on the affair? Instead, we just get where they met up and how fast the clothes came off.

In an interesting aside, the author’s father was the lawyer who actually accompanied Svetlana to America and was the one who actually gave her away at her marriage to Sid Evans. But there was no affair between them. And there were no journals.

This book had a strong premise and started off on a promising note. It just didn’t live up to its potential. And I was upset to learn from the Author’s Note how much of the book was entirely made up. Not what I expect from something calling itself historical fiction.

My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

This book was quite fascinating! Fiction written like non-fiction, with a careful balance of facts and imagination. Svetlana Alliluyeva, later known as Lana Evans, was Stalin’s only daughter, and defected to the USA in 1967. It was a huge deal at the time, as one can imagine.

John Burnham Schwartz’s father was the lawyer who accompanied Svetlana Alliluyeva from Switzerland to the US, and the author used this actual event as a basis for his novel. The novel has two narrators, Svetlana Alliluyeva’s voice through her diaries, and the fictional lawyer Peter Horvath’s voice in notes through-out. Some of the characters are fictional (Peter, the CIA minder Dick etc), but others are real people (Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow for example).

The Red Daughter is mainly focused on the time after Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the US, her life as a Soviet-born woman navigating through the trials of living in the US and understanding the country, the people, the culture, and her own thoughts, needs, and wants. There is however a lot of background information on her life as a child, her father, her mother, brothers, as well as the two children that she left behind in the USSR. As a reader it’s important to set yourself in Svetlana’s shoes, and understand what it would have been like to grow up as Stalin’s daughter. No one was ever safe, even family. But once Svetlana arrives in the US, she is also never really left alone, and one can understand some of the choices that she makes based on this.

I had a personal interest in this story as I grew up alongside the trauma inflicted by Stalin and his regime that has been passed along through generations. (My stepfather’s parents and grandparents were deported from what was Poland at the time to gulags in Siberia, and then left stranded with no home to go back to in the middle of WW2). I was interested in reading more about how Stalin’s existence and legacy would have affected his daughter and her children too, and this book was a great way to learn more about the person Svetlana Alliluyeva was. Obviously The Red Daughter is fiction and poetic license has to be expected, but I think John Burnham Schwartz did a great job depicting life in the USSR at the time, and staying truthful to the facts and the person that Svetlana Alliluyeva was.

I have read or seen on TV about this girl but never knew she wanted to come here. The childhood was so interesting,the whole story was but got so confused on certain things that had to be done for her to get to do this that and how to go about it. Just got confused so much,sorry,it may have been me but just couldn't finish the rest. Maybe just not my type of book but it doesn't mean that It's not great for someone else!!

3.5 stars
I tend to find anything to do with the history of the Cold War era and Eastern Europe interesting – fiction and non-fiction. The Red Daughter is an odd mixture of both. I read it with interest but I’m still trying to figure out what to make of it. The book is described as a novel, but it is about Svetlana Alliluyeva, who was Joseph Stalin’s daughter, focusing on the time in her life after she immigrated to the United States. In real life, the author’s father was an American lawyer who accompanied Alliluyeva as she went to the US. The novel includes a central character who was a lawyer who played such a role in Alliluyeva’s life. But the author proclaims in the afterword that the relationship between Alliluyeva and the lawyer in the novel is entirely fictional, and does not reflect the real relationship between his father and Stalin’s daughter. The book also purports to be based on Alliluyeva’s journal as it was delivered to her lawyer after her death, but it turns out there was no such journal or delivery. Weird, I know. Much of the book portrays Alliluyeva as a difficult person who led a difficult life. If there was no such historical figure as Svetlana Alliluyeva, I’m not sure there would be any reason to read this novel. Given the admission that much of this book was made up, it’s not to be read for the purpose of understanding Alliluyeva. So why read it? I’m not sure, but I did read it with some interest. I guess I’m still feeling a bit perplexed about this one. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an adance copy.

I quite enjoyed this book on Stalin’s daughter, someone not many people know much about. Stalin was brutal and even to his own family, I am glad to have read her story and how she defected to the United States.

3.5 Stars. I was really curious about the premise of the book, given that my family is from the former Soviet Union. Although it is fictional account of Stalin's daughter and her defection to the United States, I found the formatting of the book made it a bit hard for me to really get into the story. The factual information throughout the novel however was quite fascinating and I really enjoyed getting to learn more about a woman that I really knew nothing about. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC.

I struggle with this review simply because I fear my words won’t adequately capture the beauty of this book. I found “The Red Daughter” to be an incredible portrayal of the historical figure, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s daughter. For me, the beauty of this book came through the author’s ability to capture the pain, oppressiveness, and violence of Russia through his rich but somewhat stark writing. The author is not writing a novel strictly about a time in history but rather focusing on a specific character and through this character the reader begins to understand the complexity and horror of that time. It is a somewhat challenging book to read simply because often, and most recently, historical fiction is written to comfortably take the reader on a journey back in time. Unfortunately, there is nothing comfortable about Stalin’s Russia and any journey that is to truly evoke a sense of that time necessarily enters territory that is complex, unsettling and harsh. For me however whether comfortable or not, this is what literature at its finest does, takes the reader on a journey to a time that they can sense and feel emotionally as well as intellectually. And it is exactly such journey the author, John Burnham Schwartz is taking the reader on in “The Red Daughter”. For this reason, it is “must read”, and not to be missed! I was privileged to receive a free advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the Publisher, Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.

As a fan of historical fiction, I found The Red Daughter dull and academic. It's more like it's written for study instead of leisure reading. The narrative is too wordy and complicated. This woman has a great story, but it's not executed well here. It's a deep literature kind of read for the more studious readers. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This narrative just didn’t work for me. Perhaps it is the diary format, or the giving years of catch up information in a big chunk, but this book did not peak my interest. I stopped reading at 22%.

Interesting subject but very dry. Had a hard time getting into this one. I enjoy historical fiction but this wasn’t one of my favorites.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for a copy of The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz.
3* I love Historical Fiction and this novel does fall into that category. Sadly, it did not grab me. We follow Svetlana Alliluyeva the daughter of Joseph Stalin, ruler of the Soviet Union as she defects to the United States in the late 1960’s. This story has all the elements of a great novel, but I found the pace slow and methodical. I didn’t connect to any of the characters. For me, the author’s note at the end of the novel was the most interesting part. He layed out the true facts and why he wove a story around them.

Based on 15%: The prose is very dry, it reads like an encyclopedia. What also is striking, missing plot. This does not read like a novel. It is not an engaging read for me to continue with this book.