Book Review: The Red Hotel: Moscow, 1941. The Metropol Hotel and the Untold Story of Stalin's Propaganda War

The Red Hotel: Moscow, 1941. The Metropol Hotel and the Untold Story of Stalin's Propaganda (Disinformation) War, by Alan Philps (First Pegasus Books, 2023, 451 pp, $29.95), a Washington Post 50 Best Books of 2023. Review by Skye Anderson

Mistitled?

If you read and loved Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow (I tried but couldn't finish it), you will love The Red Hotel. The first is a novel and the second is a long piece of non-fiction (451 pages) but both are centered around the Metropol hotel in Moscow (365 rooms). The red cover with yellow-gold letters is mirrored when you take off the cover and find the book is red with yellow-gold front and back inside pages. Red is the color of communism, after all.

However, like Russian novels with too many characters and too many pages for the uninitiated, The Red Hotel covers too much that is not relevant to the hotel (and thus the title) so the book title is a bit misleading but fortunately the subtitle says it all. It could have so easily been a trilogy or just edited down to incidents at the Metropol (less background of the characters) and those residing and working there during WW2.

If you thought the "Dog and Pony Show," The Five O'Clock Follies during the Vietnam Conflict, was a farce, you haven't read The Red Hotel. Most foreign correspondents and reporters lived in the Metropol with nightly banquets and caviar inside for the foreign journalists, freezing and starving outside for the Russian citizens. . . .

Disenchantment

Few of the reporters were fluent in Russian, so the government supplied them with translators who would read the daily papers to their assigned person (and, since these young women were transcripted into service, they also reported back on their reporters' questions and conversations. Some of them even moved in. Both people were issued ration cards that permitted them to shop for delicacies like sugar that the populace could not obtain. The young translators were idealistic communists but many of them soon lost their enthusiasm for their government's doings and changed sides in their minds. It was so hard for both parties to live 'the life of Riley' in the midst of poverty.

Nightly parties alternated among the reporters' rooms but were always liquid (read: vodka). And the biggest complaint was the fact that the bored reporters were not permitted on the battlefield so they not only had to depend on government 'news' in the official Russian papers, but their stories were sent to the censors before they were permitted to be sent to their home countries' papers. Consequently, little news came out of Russia.

In many of the 29 chapters, we follow the lives of perhaps half a dozen Russians and foreign reporters, with the most interesting chapters being about the women. And the reader will learn that the wife of JBS Haldane, that brilliant geneticist, was one of the very few foreign female journalists!

At the end of the book author Alan Philps brings us up to date on the major players and what happened to them during the 50s and even to this day.

And, as the pages are turned, the reader's interest is piqued by accounts of spying and the gulags.

It would help to have a pretty good knowledge of Russia and the Soviet Union for you will run into Averell Harriman, Shostakovich the composer, Edgar Snow, Margaret Bourke-White, Molotov, . . . .

Book Review: Banyan Moon (three generations of strong women)

Banyan Moon, by Thao Thai (Mariner Books, 2023, 336 pp, $30), a "Read* with Jenna" selection. Reviewed by Skye Anderson. 

A Book Club Read

Banyan Moon is a lovely, lyrical sweet book (yet leaving the reader a bit apprehensive in parts) about three generations of strong women living in Vietnam, Florida, and Michigan, with lives intertwining and repeating, with the youngest being so very brave and the eldest even braver. They attack each other with word weapons and still live together in a big old decrepit house in the country with a huge old banyan tree in the front yard. Both the house and the tree seeming to be major characters. . . .

Our Banyan women survive so much; deaths and relocations and betrayal and inheritance and abuse and objects saved and especially the secrets women withhold from each other but slowly either reveal or destroy as they learn to accept each other a little bit more. We live the three generations along with Ann and Huong and Minh yet also glimpse the grandmother's mother and the granddaughter's child-to-be.

The reader will be surprised by several events but then realize that all the loose ends become tied up nicely with a bow in a lovely package for the reader, that there is only one way the various events can turn out and not in the way the reader may expect.

Mothers and Daughters (reminiscent of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons): Universal

Does a mother ever cease being a mother to her daughter even when she grows up? Can a daughter become mother to her mother? Does understanding and acceptace skip a generation sometimes with grandmother and granddaughter closer to each other than to the one in the middle and vice versa? They may love one another but do they really like one another?

The reader will relive her own childhood and the relationship she has (or had) with her own mother (and daughter). The complexity of the relationships in Banyan are focused on the complexity of the stories with the grandmother narrating from her grave, with chapters alternating among the three narrators, with skipping from place to place and time to time. And yet, the reader does not easily become lost in the stories. 

You will see yourself in one of the women at times. You will see your mother in one of them but not the same one all the way through the book. Men will also see their mothers and their wives and their daughters. If you don't see your family, you will see the family you dream of. I would not be surprised if, after reading Banyan, some relationships are mended.

Writing Style

Author Thao Thai could have written this saga of a family over time and geography, wholely set in America or, instead of using the Vietnamese experience, used the Italian experience or the Irish, or the Scandinavian, or the Jewish or - pick any US city and you would love that story just as much as this one.

Her choice of words to describe everyday things is unique and memorable.

Readers will argue about the characters and the choices they made. Readers will disagree about the paths a character takes but will realize the inevitability of it all. And what about the minor characters, the men? And the significance of the house itself? Where is the study guide for Banyan, the reader's guide for book club discussions?

What would I change? I would add a small glossary to explain some of the Vietnamese pronouns that represent a person's status such as little one, or older "sister," or em, chi, anh, ba, con, co, ong (I don't have access to tone marks or diacritical marks in this font). These pronouns reflect the age, gender, closeness to the speaker or place in the family.

And I wonder about the meaning, if any, behind the choice of Huong's brother's name: Phuoc. . . .

*Jenna Bush Hager

Book Review: Biscuit's Christmas Storybook Favorites (collection of nine)

Biscuit's Christmas Storybook Favorites, by Alyssa Capucilli (Harper, $13.99 HB, 2000 [books from 1997 onward], ages 2-6, preschool - grade 3, 192 pp) Review by Skye Anderson

Everyone's favorite puppy, Biscuit, stars in a collection of nine (well, at least five) Christmas books, hard cover (built to last), all in one. Biscuit's Christmas Storybook Favorites is sure to become a well-worn favorite of you and yours.

Biscuit is a well-loved golden puppy belonging to a little girl (whose name we never find out). Biscuit only woofs but, nevertheless, the illustrations by Pat Schories depict exactly what is going on and the words are written to be read easily by little ones. We know when Biscuit is afraid, when he has done something wrong, when his tail wags in excitement at seeing Grandma and Grandpa

We all know Biscuit and have loved that little pup for three decades. 

Biscuit's body language is expertly depicted in all its different forms, from "Let's Play!" to getting into trouble as all puppies do. Biscuit's human, the little girl, takes care of him and teaches him all about Christmas in such a loving manner. She also forgives all his little puppy shenanigans like pulling down the tablecloth, falling into the pond and shaking off too close to his little girl, tugging on mittens, snatching a gingerbread cookie or two meant for Santa.

Mom and Dad will remember how much they loved Biscuit and his antics as they read to their little ones about families and helping others.

We all want our own little Biscuit!

Book Review: Together for Christmas: A Holiday Romance Novel (four short stories)(OT)

Together for Christmas: A Holiday Romance Novel (Mira, 2020, 384pp PB, four short romance novels/short stories) Review by Skye Anderson

Who has time in December to read a book, even if it's about Christmas or Hanukah or Kwanza or. . . ? 

Not me. But i do have time to read a short story or two and so I did - four, in fact, by Debbie Macomber, Brenda Novak, Sheila Roberts, and Raeanne Thayne in a book collection titled - what else? - Together for Christmas.

A story within a story is 5-B Poppy Lane, followed by When We Touch and Welcome to Icicle Falls and, finally, but the first one* to read, Starstruck. They all have plenty of characters and if you can't keep the characters straight, perhaps you will remember their towns: Cedar Cove, Washington, and Whiskey Creek, California, Icicle Falls, Washington and, finally, Cold Creek, Idaho. Bodies of water play a starring role, as do small towns and three generations - just in time for Christmas.

Short stories but just long enough for a prologue and an epilogue. 

5-B Poppy Lane: young girl and her boyfriend visit her grandmother and hear her tales of love and daring during World War II

When We Touch: Not every family is a happy family at Christmas time. Read about two sisters who argue often. Will they make up in time for the holidays?

Welcome to Icicle Falls: A stranger comes to town and steals a young girl's heart and then leaves. But before he does, he meets her father who does not approve. A tale of a small town where everyone knows everyone.

Starstruck: Teenage girls are starstruck over the new heartthrob in Hollywood. Fast forward maybe 10 years to find he has settled in their small town. Will he stay?

Four lovely little stories that will steal your heart - and the first one will not soon be forgotten!

*Why read this one first? It is the shortest. Plus, if you like to save the best for last like I do, save Debbie Macomber's for last - read the stories in reverse order for a change.

Book Review: The Red Dress (OT) (COVID and pre-Civil War)

The Red Dress: Old Secrets Brought to Light, by Deobrah* Edmisten (independently published, 2022, 315 pp, $10PB, Young Adult [or historical or romance]) Review by Skye Anderson

Despite such an unusual, unsettling cover, all I can say about The Red Dress is wow!

What a Page Turner!

So glad I started this so late one evening that I didn't really get 'into' it before lights out. However, the next day I finished it in one setting - The Red Dress is the kind of book you just can't put down!

Prolific author Deborah Edmisten successfully alternates short chapters set in contemporary times (during the COVID-19 Pandemic) with incidents before the Civil War when slavery was commonplace. Arabella owns a very very old (c. 1845) house in the Ohio countryside and, out of boredom one day decides to clean out the attic, finding a blood-stained red dress. Later, she finds a mysterious secret room with a bed, a man's suit, a couple of photos, a couple of letters. (But she doesn't find them all at once, thus prolonging the suspense.) 

Being during the Pandemic, Arabella discusses the finds with her next-door neighbors (with six feet of separation, of course) and, over several days, they hypothesize what could explain the items as more data surfaces. Bringing in family and away-friends to help with the genealogy search, Arabella and friends concoct several possibilities, some with dead-ends.

With perhaps too many characters, some violence, and a love story perhaps more for adults than for young adults, along with a not-surprising yet possibly unexpected ending for Arabella, the pre-Civil War secret room involvement will take the reader along for an exciting ride. Readers will know just a bit more than Arabella and friends who sometimes take a wrong turn.

*the author's name may be spelled Deobrah as on Amazon or Deborah as in the book

Book Review: Salmon Survivor (fishing, 12-year-old boy, Alaska)

Salmon Survivor, by Christian Shane (Relevant Publishers, 171pp, $14.99PB, 2022, ages 8-12, grades 5-7) Review by Skye Anderson

Short and sweet. Well, not exactly sweet since it is a coming-of-age book. Young Jack is given a journal in which he writes to his recently deceased father as he grows up one summer on a visit to Alaska to meet his grandfather. Jack is also a fly-tier (like my brother, which I had forgotten) and author Christian Shane, a biology teacher, supplies several 'recipes' in the back part of Salmon Survivor, along with references.

The Premise

Author Christian Shane in Alaska

Young boy loves to fish with his dad in Pennsylvania but his dad passes away, his book unfinished. His wife, a photographer and writer, decides to finish the book, an Alaskan fishing guide, and brings her son to his grandfather in Alaska as she gathers more information - a grandfather Jack doesn't know, whom he has never met, who has never visited his grandson in Pennsylvania due to a fear of flying.

Who Are the Teachers and Who Are the Students?

Young Jack is sometimes wise beyond his years, but not always. Grandfather teaches him how and where to catch a salmon like the Alaskan guide that he is, how to watch out for bear, and, in turn, learns about family - late, but not too late.

And the Dog

Would you believe the dog Salmo(n) actually saves someone in the end, a foolish someone who is throwing caution to the wind as he tries to be a man before his is ready? 

Delightful Features

We picture Alaska on the palm of our hand and use our fingers to remember the five species of salmon. We also love each chapter beginning's fact about Alaska. This reviewer is from that part of the country and is familiar with the place names but a map would have been helpful.

We learn the prize is in the catching, not the keeping, of the fish. One lesson taught over and over again is to throw back the small ones and any fish caught after the 3-fish daily limit.

Releasing a Fish

All in all, a book to remember!