Product Description

A magnificent epic of love, war and Russia from the international bestselling author of TULLY and ROAD TO PARADISE Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose palaces and avenues speak of a different age, when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg. Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. The routine of their hard impoverished life is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanov family, for Leningrad and particularly for Tatiana, life will never be the same again. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young man named Alexander. The family suffers as Hitler's army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn inexorably to each other, but theirs is a love that could tear Tatiana's family apart, and at its heart lies a secret that could mean death to anyone who hears it. Confronted on the one hand by Hitler's vast war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9578 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 656 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Pulling off the passionate love story embedded in a truly epic narrative is a difficult thing to do. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind remains the blueprint for the genre, while Tolstoy's War and Peace carries off the literary honours with the Pierre/Natasha/André ménage, itself a blueprint for Mitchell's Brett/Scarlett/Ashley musical chairs. Paullina Simons' ambitious The Bronze Horseman weighs in at nearly 700 pages, and it's quickly apparent that the Russian-born author has the measure of this kind of epic romantic saga. The power of her descriptive writing, the vividness of the historical detail and, most of all, the strength of her central characters mark out her novel as a considerable achievement.

Simons was born in Leningrad and emigrated to the US in the 1970s. She sets her love story in the war-torn Leningrad of 1941. Utilising as her setting this phantasmagoric city of decaying splendour, Simons expertly involves the reader in the fate of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, living a penurious existence with their brother and parents. Their lives are ineluctably changed when Hitler invades Russia in June 1941. On that day, Tatiana meets a confident and attractive young officer, Alexander. As the Russian winter wreaks its havoc and the bombs fall, Alexander and Tatiana struggle with their growing love in the face of death and destruction. Simons' most impressive coup here is to ensure that the troubled love affair at the centre of her narrative is not engulfed by the terrifying conflagration that surrounds her characters. Tatiana in particular is drawn with a truly felicitous grasp of character: idiosyncratic, strong-willed and charismatic, she possesses all the requisite qualities to support a tale such as this.

However, the author isn't content to merely soothe and stir the reader: by using Hitler's war machine on the one hand and the dehumanising Soviet system on the other, she is able to make some powerful statements about the durability of the human spirit, but never at the expense of descriptive passages refulgent with power and beauty:

The train station crumbled like wet paper. Tatiana crawled from the beams and the fire, but there was nowhere for her to go. Through the smoke she could feel bodies around her. Hot and faint, she felt for them with her hands. The gunfire came from right outside the door, but when the lattice beam fell from the ceiling, all sounds faded away, all faded away and there was no more fear. Only regret was left. Regret for Alexander.

Review
Praise for Paullina Simons Tully 'Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you'll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next! Read it and weep -- literally' Company Tatiana and Alexander 'This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair ! It also has -- thank goodness -- a welcome sense of humour and discernable characters rather than ciphers.' Victoria Moore, Daily Mail The Bronze Horseman 'Pulling off the passionate love story embedded in a truly epic narrative is a difficult thing to do. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind remains the blueprint for the genre, while Tolstoy's War and Peace carries off the literary honours ! it's quickly apparent that the Russian-born author Paullina Simons has the measure of this kind of epic romantic saga ! She is able to make some powerful statements about the durability of the human spirit, but never at the expense of descriptive passages refulgent with power and beauty' Barry Forshaw, amazon

About the Author
Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad in 1963. As a child she emigrated to Queens, New York, and attended colleges in Long Island. Then she moved to England and attended Essex University, before returning to America. She lives in New York with her husband and children.

Customer Reviews

Amazing, beyond words!
I picked this book up at a sunday market for a couple of pounds and it turned out to be the best buy ever!! Brilliant story, Paullina really is an incredible writer, and thanks to amazon i have learnt that this is the first of the TRILOGY!! Wow my day just got a whole lot better as i am re-reading this book currently... Buy it, read it, love it.

Oh...my...God!!!
I just finished reading the Bronze Horseman and I am absolutely breathless. I read Tatiana & Alexander first not realising it's a sequel - and adored it, but the Bronze Horseman is something out of this world. I practically had to put my life on hold and just couldn't read fast enough.

I've seen that a few readers thought that the historical details in the story are not accurate but I think everything in the book was perfectly believable and life-like - so much so that I could see every single scene in front of my eyes as if watching a movie, what's more almost felt that warm summer wind on my skin as if sitting right next to Tatia in her white dress with the red roses on that glorious Sunday in a Leningrad June. If you are not too much bothered about whether German Tiger tanks were actually introduced in 1941 or 1943 this book will give you a good description of Russia in WWII. But the reason it is really worth reading for is the most amazing story of a love under conditions that words cannot even start to describe. So considering, Paullina did rather well…

A book that I will carry with me through life.
Like many, I bought this book because I had previously read and enjoyed Ms. Simons novel, 'Tully', but nothing I had read previously prepared me for the emotional rollercoaster I travelled as I delved deeper and deeper into the heart of this story.

It is truly the greatest book that I have ever read and one that I will continue to read again and again over the course of my life. It is the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching tale of love and war that has ever been told, and since finishing it, I have been unable to enjoy any other book. I still feel emotionally and physically drained from following the ill-fated paths of the two central characters, Alexander and Tatiana and I challenge anyone who finishes it to deny the same. Yet now, my one fear is that I myself will never experience a love so powerful and a need so great, but at least I now know what to look for.

All I can say is, "Thankyou Paullina Simons."