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The Bronze Horseman
starring: Paullina Simons

List Price: £8.99

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Used Price: £0.49
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 10 to 12 days Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780006513223
ISBN: 0006513220
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: April 02, 2001
Publisher: Harper
Studio: Harper
Sales Rank: 13133

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Editorial Review:

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.

--Barry Forshaw

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- 5 out of 5 stars - Best book I've ever read
After being recommended this book by a close friend I started it and didn't quite know what to expect. It took a while to get into it, but once you are swept away with the story, I couldn't put it down. The best book I've ever read and have recommended it to all of my friends.

Truely remarkable story.

Rating:

- Wow
I cannot rate this book highly enough. I would give it 100stars if I could. This is my favourite book. The story is amazing and you really do feel for Tatiana and Alexander.

Please read this book, you really are missing out on a brilliant story that you wont forget.

Rating:

- Brilliant
Have to agree with the other reviews - this book is one of the best books I have ever read. I must have read it four or five times now and each time it never fails to move me. The reader's emotional connection with the characters is second to none. Yes, perhaps there are minor flaws in the book (including the plot device of Dmitri), but the writing is so REAL that you won't notice them much - if at all - because you'll be completely absorbed in what happens. Tatiana must be one of the most likeable female protagonists ever, and Alexander is just - well, you'll probably even fall in love with the way he smokes his cigarettes. The writing is evocative, lush, vivid, raw, beautiful.

Rating:

- To gobble it up quickly or savour it?
I bought this book based on the reviews, especially the one stating that they weren't really into war books or books set in Russia but they loved it anyway. It took me a few weeks to start reading it, but once I started...I could not stop even if I wanted to. I was so hooked. After the first few chapters I went out and ordered the sequel because I knew I was going to want it.

Beautifully written with heart stopping moments, once this book was finished I turned it over and read it again.

Rating:

- The Most Beautiful Love Story Ever Written
Having just read The Bronze Horseman and the following sequels I am completely emotionally exhausted! Anyone who loves a hero and a heroine will adore this story.
Forget all the cynical reviews re: historical facts! Who cares what year the Germans started using Tiger tanks! The only important facts in this book are the love between Tatiana and Alexander which could be felt through every single page from the moment they met. I have cried endless tears through it all and it became so much a part of my life that my "Alexander" and I will be going to St Petersburg to experience the White Nights of the city and to gaze upon the statue of THE BRONZE HORSEMAN.
Paulina Simons is the most gifted writer I have come across in a while. Having ... Read More:

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