Hello,
Well, I have waited a long time to get the new book by Carolly Erickson and was glad when I finally received it- in Germany it s not that easy to get English books.
But when I started to read it- and Erickson stated that this is a fictional novel- I soon got angry and bored by it. The story deals with the fact that Tatiana is the main figure of the novel (great- my favourite Grand Duchess) and she survives in the end.
The story starts when Alexei is born and Tatiana is seven years old- not six like Erickson says- first mistake. The main attention is put on Tatiana, but her sisters, especially Anastasia and Marie are completely left put in the shadow, Erickson mentiones them, like Alexei only from time to time- but the girls were more close and especially Olga and Tatiana, the "Big Pair". In Ericksons novel Olga is sometimes pretty mean to Tatiana and I do not think that it was usual to them.
Minnie, the Dowager Empress, is described as a bad mean old (sorry) "bitch", who s only pleasure is to attack Alix and even bring her in contact with Dr. Freud to force her to attend a sanatorium at Berlin in 1913, when the family visits the wedding of Viktoria Luise of Prussia!
The family never was to Berlin at that time, only Nicholas attended the wedding and okay, I do not like the Dowager Empress at all, but I do not think she was so bad to Alix. They had their quarrels, but to state her "nuts" is something different.
Tatiana gets very early in contact with workers and flees with a mil maid from the palace in the mornings to bring food to the poor ones.
Strange- cause to flee would be more like Anastasias character, and Marie was the one to care very deep heartly for soldiers, the poor ones and so on.
Tatiana is characterized so badly in the novel, fiction is okay- but historical facts are completely mixed up or left out. Why is Livadia not mentioned? The carefree holidays? Why does Tatiana have sex with a doctor hidden in aunt Olgas separee? A Grand Duchess would never do that and later she does it again with a soldier, who was wounded and healed by her with very intense care...her dog is "Artipo" all the way through, where is "Ortino", who was a gift her first lover? Why is Nicholas discribed as a men, who does not be able to do anything- nothing for his State- a complete weak man with a nuts woman and finally comes Rasputin and rapes a woman in the palace-
well, I m pretty sorry, this is the most worse fiction I ve ever read and it s not, because I knew the story of the Romanovs, their characters and so on- but if someone, who had never heard of them would ask me to recommend a book about a Grand Duchess- I would not mention this one!
Carolly Erickson did a good job on the book about Alexandra- that s true. But she should have read more herself about Tatiana and her family.
Sorry, now you can throw me in the deepest hole for my critics (virtually), but I was so dissapointed about the book.
ImperialHighness
