The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

The Lady of the Mine by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina W. Bouis

The Lady of the Mine is not an easy read, but it is a powerful one. Set in 2014 when Russia invaded eastern Ukraine, it is the tragic story of a Ukrainian mining village that suffered invaders throughout the 20th Century. There is an abandoned mine shaft in the village filled with the bodies of war victims dating back to the Russian Revolution. More recently, the Nazis executed thousands of Jews and and threw the bodies down the mine during World War II. As much as the Russians would like to expose the crimes of the Nazis, they keep the mine quiet because exposing the Nazis would also expose crimes committed by the Russians during their civil war and by Soviets later. 

That is the grisly backdrop to the 2014 story. When the Russians return to the village, the current conflict revives past miseries, especially when a passenger plan is shot down over the village. 

The book is told from multiple points of view, including a young soldier in the Russian occupying forces, a young woman with generational ties to the mine and people of the village, the former manager of the mine under prior Soviet occupation, and the original mine engineer, speaking from the grave because he is one of the bodies buried in the mine. Because the story is told by so many people and skips around in time, I had a hard time engaging with the book. I had to remind myself who the different narrators were and what their connection was to the historical events in the village. I also missed some of the many references to people, places, and events that are unfamiliar to non-European readers. 

Although I struggled with these aspects of the book, I ended up admiring it very much. It made me think about how dark times in history repeat themselves and the role of ordinary individuals in tumultuous times. Now that Ukraine is again fighting off the Russians, The Lady of the Mine is a particularly moving and significant story.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths. The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the Wehrmacht in World War II. Then corpses rain from the sky when a jetliner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past. Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.

NOTES

The Lady of the Mine was one of my TBR 25 in '25 books and counts as my Ukraine book for the 2025 European Reading Challenge. I got my copy in a LibraryThing Early Reviewer giveaway. 

 

Pocketful of Poseys by Thomas Reed -- BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW

Pocketful of Poseys by Thomas Reed (Beaufort Books, 2023)

Pocketful of Poseys is a warmhearted family story about a brother and sister charged with scattering their mother Cinny's ashes. The catch is that Cinny wanted her ashes mixed with the ashes of her husband, their father, and scattered in five different places around the world. She also left the money to finance the trip.

Grace and Brian, 40-something twins, head off with spouses and children on a round-the-world adventure, only opening their mother's instruction letters as they go. Through the letters and the travel they inspire, brother and sister learn the secrets of their parents' marriage, explore their own pasts, and forge stronger bonds with their own families.

I found the story easy to engage with and I cared for the characters. I enjoy stories abut families learning to accept and forgive, especially when livened up with a little humor, like this one is.

I though the pacing was a little uneven. There ae two big digressions early on, one providing Cinny's backstory, the other Brian's. I found both distracting because they abruptly pulled me out of the narrative. Then I anticipated the same sort of digression for Grace and the other characters, and I got distracted waiting for those to pop up, which they never did. This lack of similar treatment for the other characters made the first backstory digressions stand out as clunky info-dumps. I particularly missed more information about their father. There are a couple of hints that his death might have been more sinister than a winter car crash, but we get no answers. Again, compared to the almost exhaustive detail we learn about Cinny's past, this disparate treatment stood out.

Still, I really liked the book. Thomas Reed's writing style is smooth and lively, a real pleasure to read. Highly recommended.


FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Grace Tingley and Brian Posey are forty-something twins whose lives have gone in very different directions. Grace, now a private school teacher in coastal Connecticut, was a PhD candidate at Yale when an unexpected pregnancy threw her plans into a tailspin. Brian, an adventure travel executive in Seattle, barely scraped through an obscure New England college and recently married Ella, after three years in an intimate relationship with a charismatic man from Jamaica.

When their widowed mother Cinny, a charter member of Woodstock Nation, is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Grace and Brian are there for her last days in hospice care. This is where Cinny reveals her staggering plan for the siblings: They’re to sprinkle her ashes, mixed with their father’s, at a series of exotic locations around the globe—some remote, some challengingly public, all known and loved by the Poseys.

NOTE

I got a review copy of Pocketful of Poseys through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. My copy was free, in exchange for my honest review. 

 

Mailbox Monday: Hollywood Book Club and P.G. Wodehouse

It is the first Monday in December, which means Mailbox Monday has a jazzy Christmas mailbox picture. Fa la la!

I'm also celebrating this Christmas season, as I always do here on Rose City Reader, with an advent calendar of vintage Christmas cards. Read yesterday's post to learn more about this blog tradition of mine. And check back every day through Christmas to see a different vintage Christmas image. The theme this year is Christmas cats! If you are looking for vintage Christmas images, click the "vintage postcard" or "Advent" tag at the bottom of any of the advent calendar posts and you can scroll through 12 years of vintage Christmas cards.

What new books came into your house last week? We were pretty busy mashing potatoes and baking pies, but two new books did show up:




The Hollywood Book Club by Steven Rea, new from Chronicle Books. This fun book of movie stars reading books is a definite gift option for book and film buffs.

I got my copy from the LibraryThing Early Review program. I plan to take a little "me time" during this busy holiday season and relax with this book, an adult beverage, and a crackling fire in the fireplace.

From the publisher's description:

Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe—the brightest stars of the silver screen couldn't resist curling up with a good book. This unique collection of rare photographs celebrates the joy of reading in classic film style. The Hollywood Book Club captures screen luminaries on set, in films, in playful promotional photos, or in their own homes and libraries with books from literary classics to thrillers, from biographies to children's books, reading with their kids, and more. Featuring nearly 60 enchanting images, lively captions about the stars and what they're reading by Hollywood photo archivist Steven Rea, and a glamorous stamped case design, here's a real page-turner for booklovers and cinephiles.

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse : Volume 1: "This is Jolly Old Fame" by Paul Kent. I am beyond excited about this one. I am a huge P. G. Wodehouse fan. I keep a list of Wodehouse books here on this blog and am working my way through them.

Paul Kent is writing a three-volume biography of Wodehouse, based in part on new access to Wodehouse's papers and library. This first volume is just out in the UK. For American readers, you have to order it from the publisher, TSB an imprint of Can of Worms Enterprises, or from Book Depository.

For die-hard Wodehouse fans, there could be nothing better.

From the publisher's description:

Whether you re an absolute beginner or an aficionado, Paul Kent has captured the essence of what made Wodehouse tick without spoiling all the fun; and makes a compelling case for why we owe it to our collective sanity to keep on reading him. P.G. Wodehouse 1881-1975 Humourist, Novelist, Lyricist, Playwright So reads the simple inscription on the memorial stone unveiled in London s Westminster Abbey in September 2019, honouring the greatest comic writer of the 20th century. It takes a steady hand and a steely nerve to insist that sweetness and light can prevail in a world that seems hell-bent on proving the opposite, and over 40 years after his death, Wodehouse is not just surviving but thriving all over the world. Young Indian professionals can t get enough of him; he s hugely popular in Japan; his books have been translated into more than 30 languages, from Azerbaijani to Ukrainian via Hebrew, Italian, Swedish and Chinese; and there are established Wodehouse societies in the UK, the USA, Belgium, Holland and Russia. His books are demonstrating the staying power of true classics, and are all currently in print, making him as relevant and funny - as he ever was.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Mailbox Monday: Cold Warriors by Duncan White & Why I Love LibraryThing

I got one new book last week from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.



Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War by Duncan White. This new book focuses on five writers who the author argues engaged in "literary warfare" on both sides of the cold war: George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene, and Andrei Sinyavsky. McCarthy and Greene are two of my favorites, so that alone makes me want to read this.

While I'm here, I'll give my unsolicited plug for LibraryThing. I've been on it since 2006 and use it to keep track of and organize my library. You can find my LibraryThing profile and library here. I like tracking my personal library on LibraryThing because you can add your books, tag them, and track them in spreadsheet format.

You can use the standard columns to track things like author name, publication date, page numbers, or date read. Or you can track by tag to really manage your library. This gives you flexibility to keep track of which books are still "TBR" or which are "finished" or "read." I tag "NIL" if the book is no longer physically in my library, which saves a lot of time searching through shelves. And I tag the year I read it so I can make a list of books read each year. "Wishlist" is a popular way to keep track of books you want.

Finally, I like that LibraryThing lets you add your books by ISBN so the edition on your spreadsheet is the exact edition on your shelf. If for some reason the cover doesn't match, you can chose from another cover on LibraryThing or upload your own cover.

I'm also on goodreads. Maybe there is a way to track a personal library on goodreads the same way as on LibraryThing, but I've never figured out how to do it. So I do not use goodreads the same way I use LibraryThing. I most use goodreads to post some book reviews and as as a social site. Although there is also a community of book lovers on LibraryThing -- people review books, join discussions and groups, and there is a robust Early Reviewer program.

If you are on either LibraryThing or goodreads, please come and find me!

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.