Enchantments
By Kathryn Harrison
Random House March 2012
311 pages
From the library
After the death of her infamous father Rasputin, Masha and
her sister are sent to live with the Romanov family at the imperial palace. The
tsarina hopes that Masha may be able to help her son Aloysha, who suffers from
hemophilia. While she is unable to reproduce the miracles her father performed,
a friendship develops between the two. Masha weaves fanciful tales to entertain
the bed-ridden prince. As their relationship shifts from friendship to romance,
the Bolsheviks place the family under house arrest. What will happen to the Romanovs? Will Masha's story forever be connected to the Rasputin and the royal family?
The strongest part of this novel is the relationship between
Masha and the enigmatic Rasputin. Ms. Harrison makes the relationship
complicated, but sincere. Although the story opens with his death, his influence
hangs over the whole book. In Masha’s memories, Rasputin is often away and paying
attention to those seeking his healing or his love instead of his children. But
his love for them is obvious. It’s easy when dealing with a real person to make
them into a hero or a villain. But Harrison has created a very complex
character and her writing allows the nuance of his personality and
relationships to come through.
As Masha buries her father, she has to deal with complicated feelings. “Though I well knew the difference between sleep and death,
covering my father’s body with a blanket of dirt, of the soil he loved, felt
like pulling up the bedclothes, tucking him in tight. Standing by the grave,
watching the progress of the gardeners, seeing the hole as it was filled in, I
found relief under my misery. For months I’d worried for the safety of my
father, who refused to take even the simple precaution of telling the tsarina’s
police where he was headed and whom he planned to see when he left the apartment.
He’d predicted his death and left me no choice but to wait for it. Now it was
done, his prophecy fulfilled, his body washed and dressed and laid to rest.”
It’s fascinating to discover how much of this story is truth
and how much is imagined. Rasputin did have a daughter named Masha who escaped
from Russia and became a circus performer. Part of the fun in reading Enchantments is discovering what is
factual and what is story. Reading this book will give you great insight into
the Rasputin and Romanov families. But the details of the Revolution and
the civil unrest remain unknown to the reader, since they are basically unknown
to our young protagonists.
The only downside is the strange perspective. Masha is
looking back on her time with the Romanovs. We know from the beginning that
Aloysha, at least, will not have a happy ending. She often notes that “this
will be the last time Aloysha does such and such” or “that he will be dead
within a year.” The tension that remains is caused by our lack of knowledge
about what will happen to the rest of the Romanov family and what will happen
to Masha and Varya between the present and the time that Masha is remembering. I
wonder if the story would have been even more compelling if it were told without
knowledge of what would happen later.
Enchantments is a
novel that will entice its readers to rediscover the beauty and tragedy of Russia
at the beginning of the 20th century. Kathryn Harrison masterfully
weaves a story of a girl who is forced to grow up in a moment with a young
romance, a fascinating look at the history, and the magic that exists in the
simple act of telling a story. If nothing else, you can close this book and
sing “Have you heard? There’s a rumor in
St. Petersburg…”
