The House by the Dvina
A Russian Childhood
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
The House by the Dvina is the riveting story of two families separated in culture and geography but bound together by a Russian-Scottish marriage. It includes episodes as romantic and dramatic as any in fiction: the purchase by the author's great-grandfather of a peasant girl with whom he had fallen in love; the desperate sledge journey in the depths of winter made by her grandmother to intercede with Tsar Aleksandr II for her husband; the extraordinary courtship of her parents; and her Scottish granny being caught up in the abortive revolution of 1905.
Eugenie Fraser herself was brought up in Russia but was taken on visits to Scotland. She marvellously evokes a child's reactions to two totally different environments, sets of customs and family backgrounds, while the characters are beautifully drawn and splendidly memorable.
With the events of 1914 to 1920 - the war with Germany, the Revolution, the murder of the Tsar and the withdrawal of the Allied Intervention in the north - came the disintegration of Russia and of family life. The stark realities of hunger, deprivation and fear are sharply contrasted with the adventures of childhood. The reader shares the family's suspense and concern about the fates of its members and relives with Eugenie her final escape to Scotland.
In The House by the Dvina, Eugenie Fraser has vividly and poignantly portrayed a way of life that finally disappeared in violence and tragedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a memoir redolent of storied Russiasteaming samovars and frigid sledge-rides, the scent of white birch logs burning in the fireplace, festive religious holidays and balalaika musicFraser recreates the twilight of Tsarist days, the revolution and civil war. This daughter of the merchant class, born in 1906, grew into her teens in Archangel, with frequent visits to and from her maternal Scottish grandparents. The author's Russkaya dusha, or Russian soul, emerges so palpably that although she has lived in Scotland (with a period in India) since she emigrated in 1920, her nostalgia is clearly, exclusively, for all things Russian. Her tale is peopled with myriad relatives, servants and townfolk; with the ghostly presences of her father (who died in 1928 and whom she last saw when she, her mother and brother escaped by ship to Murmansk), and babushka and dedushka, her paternal grandparents sent into exile by the revolution. The memory of her lamented home by the Dvina, Archangel's river, grips Fraser, and will the reader as well. Photos not seen by PW.
