I Was Anastasia

I loved the Frozen River so I had to check out more by Ariel Lawton… the author felt called to write this book & that makes it extra special. I appreciate all of the research & intention that went in to formulating the dual timelines. Anna’s going backward & Anastasia's going forward until the end. It was a unique way to tell the story & executed well. I read this in a review before I dove in but I 100% agree… Even if you know how the real life story ends, you really can’t predict how this book ends…It makes you ask questions the whole way through & even after you are done reading, it gives you a new perspective. There are many curiosities we may never know the full answer to but this book gives you a lot to think about. Hang tight & don’t spoil the ending!

I considered beginning this review with a spoiler alert, but after brief consideration realized that really, none is needed. The logical base for this novel - those Tsar-struck and Romanov groupies among us - know the story well, and, unless one was hiding out in the Lost City of Z for most of the 20th century, there is no way the non-Russophile wouldn't know the tale, either. I am not a fan of fiction - especially historical fiction, where a character-creating author attempts to give speech to people who actually existed, complete with their own speech - so I was prepared to dislike this book (one of the reasons I, one of those aforementioned Romanov groupies, passed over it in the bookstore and bought it used on Amazon). We all know, and have for years, that DNA proved Anna Anderson was not the Grand Duchess. So what could this book present that was at all new and interesting? I began it with pad and paper at hand the moment the Anna character (written in the third person - except for the prologue and afterword - and regressing in time) is defined as being "in her seventies" in 1968. Anastasia would still have been in her 60s. The fact that Anderson is in her seventies is mentioned about three times. I then noticed that the Anastasia portion (written in the first person, normal time sequence) mentions her age a few times - and it is correct. So, was the Anna portion in error, or a subtle way of already letting us know they aren't the same person, almost from the first page? I'm not sure. But other minor errors - why change the breed of Anastasia's dog - or was it an error? Why get Tatiana's French bulldog's name wrong? Not to mention an orthological error here, a grammatical error there, and the continuous mis-accenting of a French name which any first year French student knows needs an accent grave...sure, these are minor quibbles, but this is a historical novel, and one that claims to hew closely to fact. The author cites all the books she used in her author's notes at the end, and there are quite a few, all of which are pretty solid historical works. She notes how she combined certain historical personages into one character or changed the fate of Anastasia's dog (the likely spaniel [though I've also read it was a Pekingese, which I doubt] died with its owner, but she has the husky live for personal reasons - fair enough, she explains it) - but all in all, the result is that the book, while being a novel, doesn't actually stray far from historical fact. Even some of the dialogue she takes from published letters and diaries. So why get these little things wrong? Didn't anyone at that renowned publishing house (Doubleday) catch it? In the end, even I, the grand skeptic prepared to dismiss this book entirely, decided it didn't matter. Even I, having read every book and article published about the subject since the 1970s, who knew the details, found myself hurtling along with the narrative and actually surprised at the end. How? How could I be surprised by a story I knew the ending to? I'm not sure how to describe it. Perhaps it was just not knowing how the author was going to wind this up. One notices, progressing, that some of the reasons folks believed Anderson was Anastasia gradually are explained...that all makes sense. Yet I still didn't quite know where the author was heading. By this time the misused diacritical marks or number-subject disagreement were no longer creating slight indignation...I just wanted to see how this wrapped up. Of course, the backward timeline for the Anderson character keeps us in "suspense" (even knowing the answer) until her timeline merges with Anastasia's - Anastasia's progresses to July, 1918, and her murder; Anderson's regresses to her fiance's death in the war, giving birth in a refugee camp, being gravely wounded in a munitions factory accident. I knew all this, and yet I felt somehow surprised, and utterly disappointed that, once again, no Romanov survived that Ekaterinburg basement. It was as if, somehow, the book made me hope again - stupidly, yet it still had that effect - that there'd be a different outcome. The afterword said it all: Anderson rationalizing that we "needed [her] to be Anastasia". Then, the fictional framework for the story makes more sense, and I realized that it really was a much better book than I had anticipated. As I was nearing the denouement, I also wondered why - once DNA proved once and for all that Anderson was the Polish factory worker she was always suspected of being, and not a Grand Duchess - no further books or articles were published about her. Peter Kurth's "Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson" was the definitive work before the DNA testing - not only of Anderson, but of the remains found in 1970 in Russia and publicized in 1991 with glasnost - proved the truth once and for all. Kurth came to believe that Anderson was Anastasia, and it's difficult not to agree. Once the truth was out, Anderson appears only as a footnote in some articles or tomes as the most famous of the many Romanov pretenders. It's interesting that the only book to deal with this fascinating story - perhaps more fascinating now that the truth is known - is this novel. The Author's Notes mentions that she felt Anderson's story was as worthy of telling as Anastasia's, and she has done us a service in partially doing so. I say partially, because we are still looking at Anderson (even knowing the truth, as I said) through Romanov-colored glasses through the book. There have to be living relatives who know something about her early life, who she was before she either perpetrated this grand hoax (or was she convinced she was Anastasia?). The story of one of the greatest frauds (or delusions) of the 20th century certainly deserves to be told. How did she manage to fool even those who should have known better? Did they really just want to believe so badly, like we did? How did she fool handwriting experts and pass that ear-identification in Germany? This is a poor Pole who hobnobbed with royalty and who managed to live on the charity of believing and loyal friends for the rest of her life, passing herself off as Russian royalty. That's worthy of investigation - the supreme human interest story - but no one seems to even have considered it once Anderson's true identity was confirmed. Credit goes to this author who at least saw it, even though she structured the book as a novel and thus still didn't get into the whys and wherefores of Anderson's transformation and their subsequent effects, which take on an entirely new and exciting cast since Kurth et al. reported. The most telling line in the book comes from the lips of the fictionalized Ingrid Bergman, who meets Anderson in preparation for her role in 1956's "Anastasia" (in which the title character was an amnesia victim). Anderson asks Bergman "Do you think I'm lying?" Bergman replies, "I don't care". In the end, the fact Anderson turned out not to be Anastasia is moot for the purposes of this book. We all know that they're not the same person, but in the end, we don't care. Anderson's story is one that deserves to be told especially now that we know who she really was...and it still hasn't been. This novel is the closest to come to it. No wonder the author didn't want to write it but felt she had to. Now, someone, pick up the gauntlet and write the Anderson book that goes on the non-fiction shelf!

Confusing Book. This is an interesting book, however, the author jumps back and forth in time, between the past and the present. Kind of hard to keep track due to that aspect of the book. If you don't mind the back and forth, you might want to read it.

Ariel Lawson has written a perplexing tale of both Anastasia Romanov and Anna Anderson in a most unusual style. I admit to hating this book until the end whereupon I finally loved it. One must remember that this is fiction but it is so well written that one can believe it is fact. Because the author chose to write an imagined tale of a 17 yr old princess alongside an aged pretender claiming to be Anastasia it is often difficult to fully understand either one. The facts are that both are historically real. By the time I finished reading the novel I am more interested in the Anna Anderson story than that of the Romanov family. Sadly, people too often justify hatred of the privileged classes without condemning the haters themselves. Because the haters are presented as cruel and terrifying in their tactics, royalty gets a form of sympathy. In truth, royal families are so rigidly trained in tradition that they appear to be helpless in understanding the plight of the common man. Today Monarchs live opulent lives full of grandeur and tradition that should be embarrassing in this modern era. The author expertly used the Bolshevik Revolution to justify the degree of hatred directed against the Tsar and his family who have just celebrated 300 years of Russian rule. I found this version of Anastasia’s mystery to be a cumbersome and difficult read. I could only read bits of it at a time. It is so detailed, despairing, and frustrating that I was happy to finally see it ended. Fortunately, the ending itself is so absurd that I had to like it! Some imagination! But it is a book that will make one wonder. The truth is probably much worse that our imaginations can conceive, None of the children left behind a journal to read. Highly recommend for history buffs. In the final analysis, a very thoughtful and well written novel.

This was a really good book. I wish I'd had the time to sit down and read it in just a day or two, the way I read The Frozen River on a plane from Europe. You are totally involved in the characters and their lives and the end is a shock, even though you have to wonder why. So why didn't I give it 5 stars? Because the jumpy time line made me nuts! We're at this point, then it's 3 months earlier, then 3 weeks earlier, then back 10 years earlier... I couldn't keep up and it made me want to scream! Three weeks earlier than the 6 months earlier or what? I was never sure. I'm not sure it even mattered. Looking back at the book, you have the general idea and all those finicky dates were just guideposts. The author cites the movie Memento as being an inspiration for this book and says how much she loved the movie. (In case you don't know, it's a mystery told backwards through flashbacks.) Well...I hated that movie! I don't think that way, so I guess that was my problem with the book. Which I absolutely loved and would highly recommend.

I have never read a book like it. The skill the author has to take the reader on this journey and expose their own bias is simply remarkable.

An epic novel, beautifully written. The characters were vivid and the story was suspenseful, sad and romantic. Did Anastasia live? Judge for yourself.

Ive always been interested in the Romanov family and was looking forward to reading this for ages. Just could not put it down once I started. Told so intelligently and with such attention to detail. Wish there was more! Loved it! Book of the year so far!!!

This was a very enjoyable read.

Eines der wenigen Bücher, die ich - gelangweilt - nicht zu Ende gelesen habe.