Months after finishing this, I am still haunted by this story. Some of the reasons it lingers are due to the contrasts of my American freedoms and experiences with the restrictions that existed for even the elite in the Soviet Union.
The winter of Anya's birthplace is harsh and long lasting, with other cities seeming to have better conditions and more opportunities. Yet, even as Anya progresses towards her dream, traveling and living in new places, the promised summer of happiness remains just out of reach.
Friendships and relationships are sacrificed for the pursuit of national success, leaving behind a country with many great accomplishments but a people devoid of hope, community, and supportive relationships.
Finally, the devastating tragedy of Anya's friend and fellow gymnast, Elena, and it's subsequent cover-up, based on the real gymnast Elena Mukhina, portrays the true cost of pursuing excellence over all else.

While these themes are particularly applicable to the Soviet Union of Anya's story, they raise questions that are universal. Is happiness found in the fulfillment of a goal or in its pursuit? Can one find happiness with limited opportunities or choices? How can one maintain hope in difficult circumstances? What is the relationship between the individual and the greater good? What sacrifices are reasonable in order to achieve one's dreams? How does one move forward after tragedy?

This book brings up many weighty issues, but ultimately concludes with the promise of hope, as the characters continue to move forward in their lives demonstrating the indomitable human spirit that endures despite adversity.

Rae Meadows always pens stories with such humanity and complexity that her books are almost impossible to put down. As she describes the life of a gymnast in the former Soviet Union, her trauma, mistreatments and abuse at the hand of her coaches and the people that were supposed to protect her, the narrative takes a surprising turn that will leave readers in shock.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I struggled at times to want to read this book. I picked it up and set it down several times before I decided I could not finish it. I am not sure if I didn't connect to the characters or if the plot wasn't moving fast enough for me.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!

Growing up in the 90's I absolutely loved watching the Olympics for gymnastics, and even to this day I will always watch when they are on. As soon as I read the synopsis of this book I was very excited to read it. I knew that many gymnasts had a lot of pressure to do well, and just the whole essence always just fascinated me, so this historical fiction really touched on lots of my interests.

I was hooked on this book instantly and wanted to keep reading to find out what happens. Learning about Russia and following Anya getting chosen for the gymnastics program as well as the story of the disappearance of Anyas mom was so interesting.

I would and have recommended this book to several of my friends and acquaintances. The cover is also very memorable.

Meadows’ absorbing fifth novel follows a promising young Soviet gymnast as she enters a ruthless sports system that emphasizes winning at all costs.

It is 1973 in the remote Arctic mining town of Norilsk, where 8-year-old Anya lives with her father, Yuri, who's employed at the local metalworks. Katerina, Anya’s mother, disappeared three years ago, and it was speculated at the time that the former Bolshoi ballerina might have returned to Moscow or even defected. Despite the shadow cast by her mother’s disappearance and her father’s own loss of status within the Communist Party, Anya’s gymnastic potential has deemed her “an asset to the Soviet Union.” When she is selected to train with Anatoly Popov, Anya embarks on a physical and emotional journey that takes her from a run-down gym in Norilsk to the famed national gymnastics training center at Round Lake in preparation for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. In an alternating storyline, Vera, Anya’s elderly neighbor and confidante, recalls her privileged pre-revolutionary childhood and her years in a Siberian labor camp that also killed her husband and son. Writing with a confidence based on excellent research, Meadows vividly depicts the Soviet training system—and its abuses—without taxing readers with too many technical terms. Some of the era’s greatest stars (Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nellie Kim, Olga Korbut) make brief appearances, representing a competitive gymnastics that is transitioning from traditional balletic artistry to a more athletic—and riskier—style. If there's a flaw in this smoothly paced novel, it's the lack of conflict motivating its characters to action. Although well drawn, they are passive figures living in a society that allows for no individual agency. Also, the book’s final section covering the collapse of the Soviet Union feels rushed.

An enlightening portrait of a now-vanished world.

I want to preface this by saying that I was not in the right frame of mind to be reading this, but it has been in my Net Galley queue for some time. From the very beginning of the book, you know that the setting of this book is just as much a character as the people in the story. I do not know a lot about the USSR, and need to educate myself more, but while this book kept my attention, and the storytelling is excellent, I couldn't help but be worn down by the daily hardships of the people (adults and children) in this book. I know that I am coming from a place of extreme privilege to even say this, as I know people have it much worse than those in this book, but because of that, I was unable to finish. This was a DNF for me, but the part that I did read was excellent. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. #Winterland #NetGalley

Winterland is the story of Anya, a young girl who was selected for the USSR gymnastics program, a grueling assembly line that produced one champion after another. Success as a gymnast would mean leaving family and friends behind, but she had little choice. She witnessed firsthand that those who didn’t fall in line or live up to expectations would be left out in the cold. Sometimes literally.

Anya and her father live in Norilsk, a nickel mining town near Siberia, where it is dark and cold most of the year – often dangerously cold. It’s one of the coldest cities in the world and, today, one of the most polluted. It was also secretive because of the value of the nickel deposits and because many of its residents were sent there as punishment. The city served as a sort of purgatory for those who had fallen out of favor but not severely enough to be imprisoned.

Dissent was treason. Her mother was disappeared when Anya was so young her memories are mostly vague impressions. No one will talk about her mother – in part because they didn’t know what happened and also because they are afraid of being heard. There’s no way of knowing who is a friend and who may report you for perceived disloyalty.

Anya strikes up an unlikely friendship with an elderly neighbor who slowly opens up to her about her experiences in a labor camp and can shed some light on her mother’s fate.

I stayed up way too late reading this, but it was impossible to put down. So many have forgotten what the Cold War era was like or are too young to have lived through it. Russia was instrumental in defeating the Nazis during World War II, but the rise of the Soviet Union brought oppression of its own. Food shortages, poverty, and pressure to show the Motherland as powerful and invincible fostered a sense of paranoia and dread. Author Rae Meadows manages to transmit some of that dread to the reader as you wonder what each turn of the page will bring.

I received this Advanced Reader Copy of Winterland from Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Growing up in the 80s, when it was a given that Soviet gymnasts would dominate every 4 years and Bolshoi dancers were the pinnacle of ballet, and it was also known that this spectacle of success came at a high personal and social cost and it was interesting to read a book about a now distant history that at the time couldn't envision an end to.

Winterland was almost impossible to put down and I stayed up past my bedtime several nights to finish it.
The novel is about Anya, a gifted gymnast in Siberian Russia who is chosen to represent the Soviet Regime. From the age of six, she is chosen and is under the control of her coach, Anatoly. Anatoly cares about training Anya to win for the Soviets and has little regard for her as a human being. The narrative takes us from Anya's early childhood to her adult years. Anya is from Norilsk, a city north of the Arctic Circle where temperatures reach -40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and darkness prevails except for the short interval of summer. It is known for the mining of nickel and for the prisoner camp that once was situated there. Anya lives with her father Yuri. Her mother, Katarina, disappeared when Anya was very young. Once a promising ballerina with the Bolshoi, Katarina left her home one day and never returned. No one is sure of her fate. Anya inherited her mother’s grace and athleticism. Anya, though, wants to be a gymnast. When a gymnastic scout is sent to the gym where Anya trains in, she is notices. She is then selected to train with her trainer, Anatoly Popov, to the famed national gymnastics training center at Round Lake to prepare for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Anya saw gymnastics as her way out of Norilag. She loved the challenge. It was an honor to be chosen to train for the Olympics, to bring glory to one’s country. Her role model was Olga Korbut. Anya’s life would be controlled by her trainer until she was eighteen, when she moved on to a state job,

The story of Anya’s training is brutal, for the girl has no value unless she can do the impossible, and win. When she is hurt, she is given injections and forced to continue training before she heals. The coaches are tyrants, determining how long the girls train, what they eat. what they will do. Anya is stubborn. She does the impossible. She is on her way to the Olympics. She meets an older gymnast, Elena, and they develop a deep love. Anya finds her mother’s forbidden copies of poems and shares them with Elena. After an injury, Elena is pushed too far and a failure results in tragedy.Anya’s story is an emotional read. Vera and Yuri and Katerina’s stories give depth and insight into Soviet history. Theirs is a story of Idealism meeting cruel reality, patriotism questioned, learning one’s country does not care about the individual, learning how evil flourished.

Rae Meadows brilliantly describes the world and training of gymnastics in a way that holds the reader’s interest, drawing from her own love of 1970s Soviet Olympic contenders in gymnastics and her own experience and training.

When Anya is selected to train as an elite gymnast in 1970's USSR, she knows her life is no longer her own. With her mother long missing, she has nothing in her life to live for or care about. Her father and an older neighbor are merely surviving their existence in Russia. Set part in the gymnastics world and part on the thoughts and motivations of the other main characters, this historical fiction book sees Anya go from child to international gymnast.

I really liked the character of Anya and the gymnastics parts, but I found the other perspectives boring and drawn out. I felt for Vera and all she had been through, but she didn't really seem to care about anything. I did not connect with the plotline about what happened to Anya's mother and found all storylines to be really disjointed because of that.

Five-star plot and topic, three-star book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

Thanks Net galley for this opportunity. Regrettfully, DNF. I thought it was going to be very informative about Russian Olympic hopefuls. However, it did not hold my attention. I prefer plot driven to character driven stories, which this book wasn't .

I loved this behind-the-scenes peek into the life of a Russian gymnast. I was immediately hooked by Anya's story and loved following along as she grew up and evolved as an athlete. Meadows did a great job building the tension of the sport and explaining the pressure that Anya felt from the government. I didn't enjoy her mother's story as much. I found Katerina's story combined with Vera's story to be a little hard to connect with--it felt like a distraction from the main story which felt strong enough on its own. But overall I enjoyed the writing and the story, It felt well-researched and enlightening. I would absolutely recommend it to friends and read more of Meadows work.

Winterland takes place at first in the 1970s in a small Siberian community in the Soviet Union. Norilsk is way in the north, past the Artic Circle, 3000 kilometers (1900 miles - ish) from Moscow, where Yuri, a devoted Communist Party member met Katerina, a successful ballerina with a very promising future. They married, moved to Norilsk where Yuri was employed in a copper and nickel mine and Katerina teaches in a ballet school. They had their daughter Anya. Katerina misses Moscow and dancing and finds little fulfillment in teaching ballet. Although she, too is a Party member, she begins to question the Party's methods that take people to the end of nowhere. Norilsk is a place where people were once imprisoned during the Stalin era, when friends informing on friends and family could mean exile and harsh conditions and death. Ex-prisoners, like Vera, live in their building. Katerina and Vera talk frankly and Katerina questions her government and her individual circumstances more and more. She is drawn to religion. She is thinking independently. And one day, Katerina because of her increasing transformation is called in for a meeting at Party headquarters. She almost goes, then disappears, leaving young Anya to be raised by Yuri, the mystery of her disappearance imbuing the novel with sorrow and longing and confusion.

Anya is outstanding: She's been chosen to train as a gymnast at a local center. The man who picked her, her trainer, head coach Anatoly Popov sees stars. Anya knows that her friend Sveta was even better than she is. But Seta's father was in total disfavor with the party. These things still matter. Meadows takes us through the complete metamorphosis of a Russian gymnast, trained from a very young age under the Soviet system. This is a political story during the governance of the Soviet Union Communist Party and story about what it meant to live through the Soviet Union's dissolution, but before it was clear what that meant. As importantly, this is a universal story about what happens to the bodies, hearts and minds of children as they grow up as the next great hope for the Olympics. Anya is shot up with lord knows what drugs when she is injured and is trained to make her body keep on going no matter what, with strict regimens and intense competition to get to the top. That story, the central focus of the book is compelling, told with just enough detail for your muscles to hurt and old injuries to come back to you. There are things we all had to assume when watching top Olympians, their coaches on the side, sometimes angry, sometimes effusively adoring their charges. The obvious and extreme pressure. Meadows does an amazing job putting a face on the gymnast and on the coach and on what makes them the "ones" for awhile. Until it is over.

Winterland is also fundamentally about the social and political experience of living in Siberia, post-Stalin in a town that existed to house prison guards and political prisoners, some of each still there long after the prison closed. It is a place that particularly moves ordinary people to learn more than they otherwise might about past violence toward fellow citizens for and to question their government in the face of such horror. Is it humanly possible to rigidly adhere to government expectations that go against one's humanity? Maybe yes, when it comes to leaving Moscow and giving up a career to teach ballet in Siberia. Maybe no, when you learn about the experiences of Stalin's political prisoners. Anya's babysitter and grandmotherly figure Vera is a former prisoner. The oddball naturalist is also a former prisoner, who takes in endangered animals and cares for them. Did he work for the prison system for favor? Why is Vera so angry at him? Irina, a neighbor whose husband was a poet, but whose poetry was ultimately forbidden. What changed him to express forbidden thoughts that were too dangerous for the average citizen to read. There are other censored poets. A poem by one of them found its way to Katerina before she disappeared, a sheet of it still hidden in Yuri's room. Its words in fact speak to Anya when she finds it, putting little crack into her obedient facade. Irina has a crush on Yuri and something is developing. How will this impact their futures as party members and what happens to them when, eventually, there is no party?

This is an incredible piece of writing, bringing us strongly into what it was like to live in the time and place from varying points of view. It is a look at what made a person valuable to the Party and the Soviet system of communism, and how quickly that could change if your wife disappears or your husband writes problematic poetry or your father publicly expresses disenchantment with the party. You can skitter along the edge, having some "bad" views just so far if you did not participate in the shameful behavior. But you can't overcome a father who is out and out disobedient and a loudmouth. It will not do to actively stir the pot. I could not put this down, staying up till 5:00 a.m. to finish Winterland. No regrets. Coming back to it to write about it I realize that every character sticks with me and that each person's unique humanity shines through. I do not detail Anya's years as a more and more successful gymnast to avoid spoilers, but some famous gymnasts do have cameos and, against the odds in this highly competitive world, she makes an important friend. This period when the Soviet Union disintegrated and what led to it was a part of many of our lives. Meadows gives us a peak into how it impacted ordinary and not so ordinary people who were Soviet citizens in this period. And it is wonderful. Highly recommend!

Winterland is a historical fiction novel about elite Russian gymnasts in the 1970s. It ties in a fictional character with real life gymnasts from that era such as Olga Korbut. Some of it was horrifying, but in some ways not even as bad as what American gymnasts have been dealing with in recent years. The writing was really good, I could feel what it felt like to live in Russia at that time. This is not one of those novels where everything gets tied up neatly - it is like a traditional Russian novel in that way. I like gymnastics a lot, but this definitely shows some of the ugly side behind the scenes.

I admittedly know very little about Russian history and often find it inaccessible and overwhelming. So I appreciate when a book like Rae Meadows' Winterland comes along because it makes learning about the Russian people and culture both entertaining and educational, while also presenting the story in such a way that makes it easy to absorb and comprehend.

Winterland is a tour de force that completely wrapped me up in storytelling goodness. It follows the USSR's gold-winning 1970's & 80's gymnastics program through the eyes of Anya, a young girl selected to compete for the motherland at the precocious and tender age of eight. Anya cares nothing for winning gold for her country - she just wants to learn some new tricks - but over time, she will grow to know the crucial role she plays in promoting Soviet pride and securing honor for her country ... but at what cost to her mental and physical health, as well as that of her teammates?

Intermixed with Anya's story of rising in the ranks of USSR gymnastics is a bleak, harrowing tale of oppression and loss. Narratives from Anya's elderly neighbor who spent time in the Gulag labor camps are interspersed throughout this novel, as well as glimpses of Anya's mother's life before she mysteriously went missing under suspicious circumstances. Also told is the story of Anya's father, who is his doing his duty for the communist government, trying to be a good Soviet by not looking too closely at all of the ways he and his fellow comrades are exploited and repressed. While these vignettes do take us away from the central story of Anya's gymnastics career, they provide incredible insight into the daily lives of the USSR citizens and help paint an atmospherically ominous portrait of life in the motherland.

The 1970s and 80s were a time when Soviet gymnasts dominated the world stage, unlike today when Americans have the spotlight. The USSR was unstoppable, but behind all of that glittery gold hanging around these young girls' necks was a story of abuse and self-sacrifice. The USSR used up and spit out its gymnasts, caring for nothing except winning gold. Forcing its girls to tumble through debilitating injuries and hit incredibly risky maneuvers, the USSR gymnasts were merely pawns and unfortunate victims in a much larger game of power and pride.

While Anya's story is fictionalized, Meadows based the stories of her teammates on the real-life gymnasts who competed for the USSR at that time. Most notably is Elena Mukhina, a Soviet gymnast poised to dominate the world, winning competition after competition, and doing things no one dared try, including the Thomas Salto, an incredibly daring tumbling pass taken from men's gymnastics. Elena snapped her spine doing the Salto after she was forced to perform it after a series of other injuries that left her in a weakened state. The result? She was a quadriplegic for the rest of her life and the USSR kept the details of her injury hush-hush so as not to bring shame and scrutiny upon the Soviets.

With real-life tales of horror such as Mukhina's, it is no surprise that Winterland is an absorbing, yet distressing look into Soviet gymnastics program. Yet despite its dark and depressing overtones, Winterland is still a story of hope. Anya, the spirited little girl at the center of this novel, has heart and tries to be true to herself and those she loves despite her crushing circumstances. This book is incredible and is well-worth a read by anyone who is gymnastics-obsessed or interested in the oppressive state of life in the USSR.

This was a fascinating look at Soviet gymnastics during the 1970s. I have always been slightly obsessed with gymnastics, so this felt like an interesting dive into the life of a gymnast: the pressure, the pain, and the loneliness.

Pub date: 11/29/22
Genre: historical fiction
Eight-year-old Anya is selected to join the USSR artistic gymnastics program; over her years there, she'll find that not all that glitters is gold.

I'm a big gymnastics fan, so I knew I had to read this story! Meadows gave the reader an inside look into the rigors of the Soviet gymnastics machine - this world was as cold as the show depicted on the book's cover. Meadows took inspiration from Elena Mukhina's story, a true gymnastics tragedy, and showed how the gymnasts were used and discarded for their country's glory. Similar themes continue in gymnastics today (see Larry Nassar and the numerous other coaches accused of abuse). Anya's story was powerful, and I enjoyed reading it.

Thank you to Henry Holt & Co. for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Interesting ideas but poor storytelling

When I was 30% into this book, I set it down while I was on vacation for 6 days. Not once did I think about this book.

Winterland didn’t have a clear identity (and not in a good way). When I was 80% into the book, I was wondering where the book was going. It wasn’t plot-driven. So the suspense never increased. This book certainly wasn’t a Carrie Soto is Back.

If it was supposed to be character-driven, the author went too wide instead of deep on this one. Instead of focusing on Anya, Meadows tried to tell the story of Yuri, Irina, Vera, Katerina, Elena, and Svetlana.

Because of the number of characters, none of them were properly developed so I wasn’t invested in any of them. When you read The Hunger Games, you know why Katniss has certain friends—the author shows us moments that pass between the characters.

However, in Winterland, we don’t witness moments passing between the characters. Even though Svetlana keeps showing up in the book, I still don’t understand the friendship between her and Anya. Did Svetlana come to her rescue?

Another example: One of the characters has a relationship in the labor camp. It was described in two paragraphs. What? What was this character feeling? Did she look for the person? Did she look forward to meeting up with this person, just to feel special for a moment? Did she fear for her safety after the relationship?

The format of this book just didn’t work. It is presented chronologically with short flashbacks. Wild Swans is a book that I really enjoyed, and it was told chronologically but not in flashbacks. It went deep into the lives of three characters. Winterland, in contrast, felt disorganized, and the details were so high level that I didn’t connect with the story.

The real-life story buried under this is actually very interesting. Elena Mukhina was a gymnast representing the USSR in the late 1970’s. She has an extremely dangerous (now banned) move named after her. Very sadly, she broke her neck two weeks before the 1980 Summer Olympics while attempting The Thomas Salto.

If you aren’t already familiar with The Thomas Salto, pull up a video on YouTube, essentially the gymnast does not land on his or her feet but dives into the mat. You must land perfectly on your shoulders, or you will break your neck. The move is now banned in both men’s and women’s gymnastics.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

An amazing novel set in an industrial town north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia. Young Anya gets selected to enter the program to become a gymnast and we follow her path to become a competitor at the highest level. The author weaves some real-life like characters like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci into this fascination and heartbreaking story. Highly recommended.

Winterland is a beautifully written, tragic, and unforgettable look at the grimy reality behind the Soviet Union’s utopian promises. Mainly set in the 1970s, Winterland focuses on the family of a very young gymnast and her grueling path to greatness. (You will want to You Tube the triumphs and catastrophes of her nonfictional teammates.). The multidimensional portrayal of these disillusioned visionaries, Gulag survivors, and tortured athletes will stay with you long after you reluctantly finish the novel