I got about halfway though this book and finally stopped reading it. I love long books however, this book is in serious need of more editing. It just ran on and on without adding any interest. Since I did not finish this book, this isn't an actual review, so please don't treat it as such. I will not be posting a review anywhere as I do not post reviews for books I haven't read all the way through.

Featured in "Reading on a Theme: A Russian Setting" on Intellectual Recreation.

Sana Krasikov's debut, spans multiple generations and several decades. Beginning in the 1930s, we see idealistic Florence Fein leave Brooklyn for the Soviet Union. In 2002, Florence's son, Julian, seeks answers about his mother's life and hopes to convince his own son to leave his job in Russia and return home to the United States.

Sana Krasikov's story is truly epic, and I was deeply engrossed in Florence's tale in particular. However, the book is also long and somewhat episodic, and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, I found some episodes to be much more engaging than others. I especially got bogged down by the Julian's business meetings in Russia. I'm not that interest in business deals to begins with and then the whole Russia corruption, old-boys club atmosphere was a bit of a slog for me. However, I understand completely why this part of the story was necessary, and I think it had to be in the book.

The way Russia kept drawing the Brink men back to Russia was fascinating. I like how there was this sense of inevitability in the story. Ms. Krasikov takes her time with the intricacies of the story and the result is a tale that digs deep into the trauma of the Stalinist era for one family.

First book of the year that I could not finish. I found the time lines to be confusing and the story just dragged on and on and was very bleak. Didn't feel it right that I should review it on any websites as I did not finish it.

thanks for the opportunity.

The Patriots is a beautifully inspired epic of Florence Fein from Brooklyn, a career girl of Russian Jewish descent. Her job takes her to Cleveland to assist with a business deal between her American employer and a Russian company. Smitten with one of the Russians, she eventually trails him to the homeland. This begins her long story recounting the years 1932-1934 and up in Russia, turbulent years to put it mildly. She and her Jewish husband come through WWII virtually unscathed, safer there from persecution than perhaps anywhere else. But they are in Russia and so it does not remain safe for long. They are soon arrested for espionage and their little boy placed in an orphanage.

I much enjoyed Florence's story, alternated with a narration from her son Julian, who became an American. There was a third story of Julian's son Lenny, who resides in Moscow, and a visit from Julian, which I felt added very little to the story and almost, in fact, ruined it all for me. The book is over 500 pages and jumps around a great deal between countries and between timelines. This is a lethal combination for me and I felt like giving up on it many times. I'm glad to have finished though because it turned out to be a lesson in loyalties, faith, forgiveness, perseverance, promises kept, and much more.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

I received a free ebook from netgalley.

I tried but I just couldn't get into this book. The writing itself isn't bad, it was just not as interesting as the description made it out to be. There's a lot of rambling detail and the book is much longer than I wanted it to be. I'll try to return to it at a later date.

My apologies to netgalley, the publisher and the author.

While I admire the scope and the subject matter of this book I did not particularly enjoy reading it. I think the author did a masterful job of telling this really big and important story about Stalinist Russia through the eyes of an immigrant family of multiple generations. It was sad to see the idealistic dreams of the young Florence be shattered by the realities of her new life. To follow her son Julian as his dreams failed to match realities. Then young Lenny, who loved his grandmother with steadfast devotion, began to learn the true story of her life and the way she kept it all so guarded.

Despite the chapter headings with dates, I found it somewhat difficult to follow the story line through the war years and into modern day. Add to that it was told from different characters' perspectives requiring the reader to stay really actively engaged to know who the story was following and when.

I think Sana Krasikov is a brilliant writer and storyteller, this just wasn't a perfect book for me and I realize I am in the very small minority with that opinion.

The Patriots by Sana Krasikov is a family epic spanning three generations. From Depression era Brooklyn, New York when Florence Fein leaves college to take a job in Moscow. To post-Cold War American, where her son Julian is trying to learn the truth about his mother and her patriotism toward Russia as well trying to convince his own son, Lenny, come home. Julian works for an oil company which takes him to Russia frequently. He learns that the KGB is opening files, he sees his chance to learn the secrets his mother took to her grave. He uses this trip to also plead with his son to return to America as Lenny seems to have inherited his grandmother’s devotion to Russia. Will Julian finally learn the truth about his mother? Will he understand what he learns? Will Lenny return home with Julian? Or will he remain in Russia?
The Patriots is a story told in alternating viewpoints, Florence, Julian and Lenny, as a tale of the one family, two countries and the events which lead to the beginning and end of the Cold War. The writing is beautiful, almost lyrical, with sweeping descriptions of the locations, the emotions and events. I enjoyed the family discovery as an adult child sees his parent in a new light with, possibly, a new understand of her motivations and convictions. I found the book a little hard to read at times with the alternating time line and I suggest make note of the time and location given in an illustration at the start of every chapter. However, I enjoyed it and look forward to reading it again in the future. Overall, if you enjoy historical fiction, you will enjoy The Patriots.

The Patriots
is available on Amazon in hardcover and on the Kindle
and
Barnes and Nobles in hardcover and NookBook

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Incredible writing. To tell a story over several generations was so fascinating. The detailing made me feel as if I was in Russia. Florence was fierce! She is a tough woman and has a great story. Unputdownable!

The Patriots is a very different story - it’s the reverse of what I typically read - instead of an immigrant moving to the states, it begins with Florence, a young woman from New York moving to Russia in 1934 and follows the course of her and her family’s lives. It’s great historical fiction - part political and social commentary and part family saga. It was so interesting to read about Russia from the perspective of a US citizen who chose to move there; to learn how she experienced WWII, the aftermath of the war and the changing political climate in Russia throughout the 20th century.

The author has a strong creative use of language which brought me deep into the story. There are great analogies to literature, theatre and other cultures. The book alternates between the current day lives of Florence’s son and grandson and the trials and tribulations in Russia of Florence from the 30s through the 50s. Just as you become completely absorbed into the story, the chapter ends and you move to a new time frame. Often when I am reading books that jump between two stories and multiple time frames, I become annoyed yet in this case it only made me want more.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me an early release of this book.

I am currently on a small Russian kick in my reading and enjoying it very much. This is the story of a young, idealistic Jewish woman from Brooklyn named Florence Fein who goes to Russia in the early 1930s to pursue love and the hope for a better life. Reality soon hits her smack in the face in the form of hardship, deprivation, and prejudice but she is determined to stick with it and ignores the pleas of her family to return home. Her fascinating story is told in a third person narrative.

In contrast, her son, Julian Brink, tells his own story in the first person voice--bringing us into the world of modern day Russia as he travels there to do business and visit with his son, Lenny. Julian comes to a better understanding of his mother as he looks into the official record of her past and talks to his uncle Sidney.

Be prepared for a long, slow, bleak read. I honestly never felt compelled to return to reading after putting the book down for a few hours but in the end, I'm glad I read it. I was very touched by the life of Flora Solomonova Brink, a naive woman of ideals and political sympathies, blinded by principles, who makes many mistakes and pays the price. I thoroughly enjoyed the look at Russian life portrayed in the story and what it was like to live in fear of that pounding on the door in the middle of the night. A cautionary tale in many ways!

This novel was a bit of a challenge for me. I did not necessarily understand the main character's decision as a young woman, to leave the USA for Russia. I'm glad that I stayed with it.
I agree with other reviewers who've said that it seems the book could have been quite a bit shorter. Kudos to Ms. Krasikov for pulling it off..I was never discouraged enough to give up on it, and I'm quite glad that I didn't.
I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. Very well written.
Thanks to NetGalley for my copy, and the chance to enjoy it.

This big novel about several generations of an American family and their lives in Russia spans the years of the Great Depression to today. It is fascinating historical fiction, set in an era and a place that don’t get much literary attention.

I found myself flipping the pages of this book to find out what will happen to the characters, even when their futures have been foreshadowed by the stories of their children.

I found it painful that too much of the Soviet era language and paranoia, flexibility with regards to the truth and to history rang resonant bells in our current political climate. “Who was more dangerous, a fanatic who believed hideous falsehoods, or a cynic who only pretended but was willing to make them true if it was necessary?"

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and RandomHouse

This is a long one, but well written. Stalin's era of socialist control and terror is vivid and I found myself nervous during each chapter of Flora's life in Russia.
Propaganda, lies, secret police, "purges", labor camps, twisted stories, desperate betrayals in order to survive and constant fear.
Communal apartments shared by 15 families, daily lines for food, housing permits every three months and no access to the outside world.
I spent most of the book disliking Florence. Why would any American citizen leave the US to live in Stalin's soviet union? She believed all the anti-American groups and thought Russia would be up and coming--a career! She continued to make stupid choices throughout the book. But the history was good and Julian's story pulled me in.
Advanced reader copy courtesy of the publishers at NetGalley for review.

The Patriots is a sweeping, multi-generational saga that focuses mainly on two characters. First, American-born Florence Fein travels to Russia in the 1930s. Despite her good (and almost unbelievably naive) intentions, she gets herself in a whole lot of trouble while living there. She's accused of serious betrayals, and though she goes to great lengths to save herself, in the end, she is separated from her son and sent away to a labor camp. The second main character is Florence's Russian-born son, Julian, who lives in the U.S. but decides to travel back to Russia in 2008 in order to better understand his mother's troubled past.

Let me start off by saying that plenty of people are going to love this book. If you are really into historical fiction, this is your jam. For me, however, reading this book was torture. It took me three days to get through the first 25 pages. At the 100-page mark, I was still bored stiff--and there were 450 pages left to go...

The weird thing is that I actually liked Florence, and even Julian, most of the time. The story is technically full of adventure. Love, betrayal, torture, murder, family conflict, and more are thrown into the mix. But, dear Lord, the storytelling is so dull. The pace is slow, slow, slow. Things do pick up at the end, but getting there is such a painful slog.

I'm giving the book three stars because the premise is interesting and the characters are somewhat engaging. But, ugh, I'm so glad to be done with this one.

This is a lengthy historical novel that covers a number of years and characters. It's an interesting look at the Soviet Union and the Communist party. It's not a feel-good book by any means, but it does make one glad to be an American.

The narrative is very detailed which can bog the story down somewhat but it's definitely an impressive debut novel.

I must admit I didn't make it all the way through this book, perhaps a third of the way before I gave up. It well could be me, I picked this book up time and again trying to start in before I actually did. The story sounds fascinating and I love family sagas and historic fiction, so I thought this would be a great match. Alas, I found it to be rambling, a bit confusing, and ultimately not for me.

I apologize to NetGalley, the author and Random House as they were so kind to send me an e-ARC of this book.

DNF. Although this author writes very well, I lost interest around the 15% mark. I did not care about any of the characters, and found many of them whiny and annoying. I was somewhat confused about who was being described at times, and how characters were related to each other. I tried to plow through it but nothing much seemed to be happening. I felt bored by it all. I think it would have been a much better novel if it had been shortened and extraneous descriptions omitted.

I don't consider it fair to judge a book that I haven't read cover to cover, so I'm not posting this review online. This is to let the publisher know why I did not finish it.

Years ago I used to walk on the beach at low tide every morning with my little daughter and our rescue dog. In spring and in fall, I’d look out over the Pacific, and began to perceive the migrating birds in three patterns: closest to the ground leaped, swooped, and dived the gulls and other sand birds, busy going about daily life as they scavenged the sand and the surf, and squabbled with one another.

Then there were the middle layer birds, out there flying over Catalina Island and the tankers dotting the horizon like placid square marine creatures. These were the short-hop birds, flying for a day and coming in to roost for a while at bird sanctuaries and other areas that humans hadn’t cemented over.

Then, way high up, impossibly high, so they were barely dots, were the long distance birds, soaring so high and apparently covering thousands of miles before alighting for a season.

I thought of these layers as I read this elegantly written, brilliantly observed novel that felt like a memoir, its details resonating with truth in every detail, every passion, and every grimly horrific event, with memoirs and biographies I’ve read.

In 1930, after the Great Depression hits, Florence leaves the USA for Moscow, high-minded in her determination to do something great for humanity. And what could be greater than Lenin’s revolution freeing the worker? But what she slams into, of course, is the horror of Stalinist Russia, unflinchingly depicted, as she negotiates work, culture clash, relationships. And love.

As her tale swaps with that of her son Julian, whose memories of labor camps and then of American plenty make him an outsider in both paradigms as he searches for his mother’s reasons for casting such a long shadow over his and his son’s life, we also obtain a glimpse of Russian life and how the heinousness of one power-monger can cast a shadow of evil not only over his own time, but generations after. I could only think, Timely, much?


Florence, as an old woman, refuses to live with her real name on her apartment mail box; in her retirement home, she endures bedsores and neglect rather than make trouble. She sticks to her survival mode to the last day of her life, so very different from the loving, passionate, high-minded young woman who went eastward so many decades ago, but that is not the sum of her life. Far from it.

This book is not about black and white, but the many, many shades in between. America versus Moscow in the political arena, and yet there is still trade. Individuals from both sides still manage to find moments of love, as well as betrayal.

Systematic cruelty occurs because of ideological determination, because of fear, because of angry relish for taking out one’s own hatreds on the helpless. And then there are the many types of non-personhood, from political to cultural to interpersonal: another layer is the Jewish experience, east and west, in the twentieth century.

It is not an easy book to read. It moves back and forth in time, shifting from omniscient narrator to first person, and of course there is the unflinching content, so well written that one cannot escape the heart-strike of intense emotional engagement that one can when reading awkward prose full of predictable cliché—clunky fragments in paragraph form—the oily ease of purple sentimentality.

As I read, I kept marking extraordinarily insightful lines and sharply realized, elegant writing until I looked back over a stack too numerous to count.

Summing it up brings me back to my birds, as I am visually oriented: the complexity of all three levels merges into a whole that depicts, in its myriad details, the inexorability of migratory experience—life moving on.

It comes to no easy conclusions, though for me, at least, the reward—besides admiration of sheer craft—was in the deeply earned appreciation for the skein of family, loyalty, and finally, keeping trust in the little things that, cumulatively, add up to greatness.

First, thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A sweeping story taking us from The Great Depression’s Brooklyn, to Soviet Moscow, Siberia and 1980’s New York.  One woman’s choice to follow a dream (and a man) to Soviet Russia changes her entire life.  Too stubborn to go back, she joins the collective and gets to work.  Later, when she feels endangered and misses home it is too late.  Passports are “lost” and there is not help at the Embassy.  This is the story of Florence, a headstrong dreamer that went to Russia for the better life, only to be met with hard work conditions and mistrust.
Falling for another expatriate, Leon, the two make a life together translating stories from magazines.  When it is decided that these magazines were dangerous to the collective, the two have to think fast to save themselves and their young son Julian.  Unfortunately these are dangerous times…
After seven years in a work camp Florence is reunited with her son.  The war, and the camp has changed her, though.  She can’t talk to Julian about this, even when he is older.  It is something he will never understand, along with her ingrained desire to not “raise a fuss”.  Living through the orphanage, and never knowing what really happened to his father, has had a real impact on how he relates to everyone.  His son, Lenny, feels the brunt of it and leaves home for Russia to make something of himself.  You see the three generations and how their surroundings change them.  The secrets that are kept for a lifetime-regrets and betrayals.
I really enjoyed this book! The characters were well developed, and I learned a lot about this point in time.  The story moved a bit slowly for most of the book due to the large amount of information.  The world building was, to me, perfection.
I did have some pacing issues, and there were a few instances where the author fell out of third person POV and went into first person (I never did learn who “I” was).  Hopefully this will be taken care of in the finished copy.
Even with these minor lapses, though it was a five star book for me. 
As far as the Adult Content Scale goes, there is sexual content (some rather explicit), language and violence.  I give it a seven.  I would let an older teen read it, but I would be wary of any reader under the age of seventeen.

The Patriots is historical fiction at its best. The story is told from three perspectives: Florence, her son Julian, and his son Lenny. They each have lived part of their lives in Russia, and part in the U.S. Florence moved to Russia from Brooklyn in the 1930s and got trapped under Stalin and Lenin's regimes. Julian (whose Russian given name is Yulik) was born in Soviet Russia, emigrated to America later, and still works in Russia sometimes. These two characters tell the bulk of the story.

It's 500 pages of complex, in-depth, well-edited language and verbal pictures. Krasikov doesn't use florid language, but builds layers of description. I felt as if I was inside the tiny rooms in the communal apartments. Or struggling with the conflict between freedom and political principals.

The themes are relevant today, despite much of the action taking place in the mid-twentieth century. How far are you willing to go to defend your family when you have no weapons? When you're well and truly trapped, is there any way to ease the burden?

I learned a lot about this time and place in history, and came to know all the main characters well. Krasikov is a master of this genre.

Thanks to Random House, Spiegel & Grau, and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for my honest review!