REVIEW: 'The Revolution of Marina M.,' by Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch, the author of "White Oleander," returns 11 years after her last novel ("Paint It Black") with a historical novel of Dostoevskian proportions, obsessed with fate and Russia's turbulent past. "The Revolution of Marina M." takes place from 1916 to 1919 in Petrograd, Russia, and is told by 16-year-old Marina, a fierce and artistic young woman and aspiring poet living a life of privilege among "the cream of the Petrograd intelligentsia."

While she is free to read poetry, write and fall in love, her brothers Seryozha and Volodya fight in the Russian Army. "I wrote poems about fever, I wrote about mud, I wrote about the sloppy end of winter, the thawing Neva, heaving from the pressure of spring, so that it sounded like gunfire."

Fitch's first-person narrative is intensely intimate, but Marina's voice is unfocused and the plot meanders. Marina romantically imagines a photo album of how her life should look, but she often changes direction impulsively, which creates the sense of never knowing her at all. Her surroundings, however, are fascinating and horrifying. Fitch includes significant historical events (such as the abdication of the czar) and details the brutal effects of the Russian Revolution on individuals.

As Marina comes of age, she is thrust into the spilled blood on the streets and the plight of the workers and artists. "And what was I but just a loose piece of dirt that happened to be lying on the floor when the big broom came through?" she wonders.

Gauzy scenes of Marina's youthful romance with Kolya ("He pulled me after him into the cloakroom and closed the door behind us. It was warm and close and full of the guests' coats and furs smelling of snow") are replaced by darkness: the death of one of her brothers in the battle for the Kremlin, tensions with family, her life in squalor alongside fellow poets, her abduction, her imprisonment and her betrayal.

Marina writes, "She entered the world like a spy. / She entered the world the queen of hearts. / Her hair a flame. / Her bones bleaching white / While he gambled her away."

The author's passion seems to reside not with the blizzard of shadowy and forgettable characters, but with Russia itself, exploring its intricate history and soul in good light and bad. While Marina's identity changes and she becomes free to blaze into the future ("Eighteen years old and full of why not"), readers' attention will turn to the dramatic life of the country, as Marina says, "the old world was returning to claim its own, coming to crush our new lives under its murderous heel."

Erin Lewenauer holds degrees from Vassar College and the University of Pittsburgh in English, French and Creative Writing. She writes for Publisher's Weekly, Rain Taxi and other publications, and lives in Milwaukee.

The Revolution of Marina M.
By: Janet Fitch.
Publisher: Little, Brown, 816 pages, $30.