Enchantments (Harrison) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
This splendid and surprising book circles through time and around stories both real and imagined, lending a tender perspective to familiar historical events as experienced by two central characters—Rasputin's daughter Maria, known as Masha, and Alyosha, the hemophiliac Romanov heir—whose physical and emotional suffering acutely remind us of the human lives behind the legends.
Susann Cokal - New York Times Book Review


A mesmerizing novel.
O, The Oprah Magazine


A surreal tale fueled by a legendarily randy real-life healer and his lion-taming daughter.... A scrupulously researched retelling of the fiery end of Russia.... Most of all, Enchantments is about the irreducible mysteries of human motivation.
Elle


Part love story, part history, this novel is a tour de force.... Told in language that soars and sears.
More


Kathryn Harrison triumphantly returns to her historical fiction roots with Enchantments, the sweeping (and wholly imagined) story of love between two unlikely allies.... Harrison takes a particular moment in time and brings it to stunning life.... Re-imagining history—and a love story—in a completely new way.
Bookpage


Harrison's novels always chart heated, dangerously emotional territory, and this one sounds no different—with the added benefit of being set during the Russian Revolution, as riveting a time as one can imagine. After Rasputin is killed, the Romanovs take responsibility for his daughters—and ask 18-year-old Masha to assume her father's job of tending to ailing tsarevitch Alyosha. The two become close, and their very different perspectives give historic scope to a country in turmoil. This should appeal to a wide range of readers—there's history and passion, told in a literary voice. Book club gold.
Library Journal


(Starred review) After the body of the revered and loathed mystic Rasputin is pulled from the ice-covered Neva River in Saint Petersburg, on New Year’s Day, 1917, his two daughters are taken in by the Romanovs. The czarina is hoping that Masha will be able to ease the suffering of their hemophiliac son, Alyosha, as her father did.... Harrison sets historic facts like jewels in this intricately fashioned work of exalted empathy and imagination, a literary Faberge egg. A best-selling author of great literary finesse, Harrison will attract fans and new readers while on a national tour with this bewitching historical novel about the infamous demise of a legendary dynasty
Booklist