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Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary picture of pre-revolutionary Russia
Review: I have stacks of books about this era, and about Russia in general, but none of them give the flavor of the time and place quite so vividly as Troyat's narrative. He follows the adventures of a British businessman who is virtually adopted by a Russian family during his first visit to Moscow. The descriptions of family life, night life -- including the theater, the ballet, and restaurants and cabarets, of religion, and even of the streets, are filtered through the consciousness of a stranger, and so are more clearly described and, where necessary, explained than in books in which everyday life is more of a background to the rest of the narrative.If you're a student of Russian history, particularly the history of this particular era, this book is highly recommended. For writers who are researching the era, this is on the level of the Writer's Digest "Everyday Life..." series for information, and really indispensable. Even so, this is not some dry text. It's lively and occasionally amusing, and always fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary picture of pre-revolutionary Russia
Review: I have stacks of books about this era, and about Russia in general, but none of them give the flavor of the time and place quite so vividly as Troyat's narrative. He follows the adventures of a British businessman who is virtually adopted by a Russian family during his first visit to Moscow. The descriptions of family life, night life -- including the theater, the ballet, and restaurants and cabarets, of religion, and even of the streets, are filtered through the consciousness of a stranger, and so are more clearly described and, where necessary, explained than in books in which everyday life is more of a background to the rest of the narrative. If you're a student of Russian history, particularly the history of this particular era, this book is highly recommended. For writers who are researching the era, this is on the level of the Writer's Digest "Everyday Life..." series for information, and really indispensable. Even so, this is not some dry text. It's lively and occasionally amusing, and always fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Memories of Moscow, 1903
Review: Imagine time-traveling with a smart gentleman who is energetic, enthusiastic, sociable, and just happened to have lived there 'then.' This is the seamless, appropriately elaborate, and richly detailed adventure one experiences in reading this book. Troyat called this book a mere "sentimental promenade,' but he was much too modest. Biographer of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Elizabeth I and others, he had a pre-Revolutionary Russian early childhood, and the recollections of his (refugees-to-France) family members. In this book he enthusiastically and carefully recreates the sights, sounds, smells of daily life. The peasantry, workers and their everpresent sufferings and struggles, commerce, law, food, the gentry, the tsar and his retinue, social life, the hapless serfs, plus plans, hopes, and dreams. The chapter "Moscow's Many Faces" is reminiscence, and very informative. The research is the backbone of this work, which is greatly enriched and informed by Troyat's emotional ties to -- and sensory recall of -- the time and place.
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