A few months ago, while listening to the radio, I heard an interview with Debra Dean, author of a book entitled The Madonnas of Leningrad. (Available at Amazon.com)

The premise behind the book was intriguing: Marina is an old woman losing her memory to Alzheimer's. She finds herself slipping back and forth between the present day, preparing for her granddaughter's wedding, and the past, when she was a young art historian working at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, Russia.

In the autumn of 1941, while the Nazis and German Army are marching on Leningrad, workers at the Hermitage Museum, including Marina, are busy day and night packing and shipping out the great art treasures stored there. It is hoped this will save them from the wholesale pillaging that has taken place in other countries in Europe after the Germans arrive. Soon most of the paintings, the sculptures, furniture and other treasures are gone and all that remains are the people of Leningrad who have taken shelter in the grand building to wait out the seige that has trapped them without food or supplies.

Marina goes through her days like those around her; hungry, cold, worrying about her lover, now at the Front. She takes her turn on the roof watching for fires caused by the dropping bombs and cares for her aunt and uncle sheltering the Museum as well. But though she keeps busy, she feels adrift and purposeless, now that her job as a guide is gone. There is no one now for whom she can narrate the history of the building and the great art that it housed. No one to whom she can say, with a wide sweep of her arm, encompassing the whole building and all its contents, "All of this, comrades, is yours."

One day, lingering in a gallery, hung with only empty frames, she meets a humble babushki (an older woman who works as a duster of art works). This woman, despite her lack of education, also feels a great joy and pride in the art which she dusted and observed. At her urging, Marina struggles to build a "memory palace" where she stores and describes all the wonders and beauties that are no longer in the building. In spite of the hunger, and cold, and terror, Marina finds it important to remember each detail of the beautiful paintings -- particularly th egreat Renaissance Madonnas -- that she hopes will one day return.

The story is told very simply, in short descriptions of the missing art work and the quick, intense, sensations that arise from surviving the horrific Seige with all its starvation and deprivation. While the story is not epic, it is, like Marina, full of the comforts that great art can bring. it certainly renewed my interest in visiting the Hermitage one day and when I do, I certainly will make a point of seeing as many Madonnas as I can.

Recommended.

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