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    The House Girl: A Novel
    The House Girl: A Novel
    The House Girl: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    The House Girl: A Novel

    Written by Tara Conklin

    Narrated by Bahni Turpin

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The House Girl, the historical fiction debut by Tara Conklin, is an unforgettable story of love, history, and a search for justice, set in modern-day New York and 1852 Virginia.

    Weaving together the story of an escaped slave in the pre–Civil War South and a determined junior lawyer, The House Girl follows Lina Sparrow as she looks for an appropriate lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking compensation for families of slaves. In her research, she learns about Lu Anne Bell, a renowned prewar artist whose famous works might have actually been painted by her slave, Josephine.

    Featuring two remarkable, unforgettable heroines, Tara Conklin's The House Girl is riveting and powerful, literary fiction at its very best.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 12, 2013
    ISBN9780062239877
    Author

    Tara Conklin

    Tara Conklin was born on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and raised in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Last Romantics and The House Girl.  

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    Reviews for The House Girl

    4/5

    581 ratings123 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Good premise but don't like chapters that segue back and forth though time. Also, ending was incomplete. Too many unanswered questions.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I have a hard time understanding all the 4-star ratings. It was difficult to stick with this book to the end. Parts of it were boring, all the detailed art in the museum, etc. It skipped back and forth from present to past too many times. The story was poignant and sad, and the trauma the Leningrad population suffered was well described. It was not my favorite read that's for sure.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Debra Dean had a wonderful idea for a novel, but the novel itself never lived up to my expectations for it. The setting, a museum in Leningrad during wartime, was new to me, and all the details - the food rationing, the artwork, the human misery during that time - were fascinating. Sadly though, the characters never felt as three-dimensional as the setting; the paintings felt more well rounded than the people walking among them. A beautiful title, a beautiful cover, and a beautiful idea for a novel---surely with just a little more editing, a little more work on the part of the author, an exceptional novel would have been published, rather than just this rather run-of-the-mill book.
    • 3/5
      The first 3/4ths of the book are great. It builds up the wonderful story to only make a big flop of the last 1/4 of the book. Then the ending just kind of ruined it for me.
    • 3/5
      I never really felt like this book grabbed. I loved the descriptions of the paintings and felt for the citizens of Leningrad as they struggled to survive the war. However, I never felt completely involved in Marina's story. I felt like something was missing.
    • 3/5
      I found Josephine's story mucho more  interesting than Lina's. Near the end there's a veeeeeeery long letter from somebody explaining things for our benefit and that's where the story really dragged, I would have preferred an omniscient narrator. All in all, it was entertaining.
    • 4/5
      I think I may have only given this book 3 stars if it hadn't been for the way this book tied into my memories of the Hermitage. I was in Russia a bit over a year ago now. I love Russia, and my month long trip was a dream come true. I spent a couple days in the Hermitage, and it was not nearly enough. I read this book not because of Russia, but because I am reading for the Mental Health Awareness Challenge, and this book was towards Alzheimer's. I wish I got more of the emotions and feelings about this women going through her disease, but what I got was lovely as well. I really love how the women can see the beauty in everything now---- dust floating in the air, the sun rays coming in. How many of us take the time to appreciate the beauty life has to offer?

      I think the author did a great job in portraying the main character slipping in and out of reality. I really enjoy (and I use this lightly because it's heart breaking) how she did a particular scene where the character feels like she is reliving her past and present at the same moment. The book in general is beautifully written. Her descriptions and word choice brings about a whole host of emotions throughout the novel.

      Despite this, the book feels disjointed and choppy, but this has to be taken with a grain of salt because it is supposed to be. The women is going deeper and deeper into her disease and so one moment she is with everyone and the next reliving her past with the siege of Leningrad.

      I'd like to know more about things in the story and incidents that took place; there's so much to the story that I'd like to continue. I feel like this could be my real life, begging my grandmother to tell me more stories and yet she simply does not or does not remember. I find it a huge shame, though understandable, that in this book the children know nothing of their parents' life during the war.

      Overall I think the book is good. I would've liked more though. But I still recommend this book--- especially if anyone has visited the Hermitage before. It's amazing how a few words the author write brings up clear memories of things I've seen in the museum. I am not a huge art fan, so I looked, but didn't study most of the paintings. I love the statues, and walls & ceilings, the Egyptian art, the armor, and I even clearly remember the paintings of the dead game---- I think I was particularly morbid back then. Everything I LOVED was of death, or the cut open game, or whatnot. I was drawn in by the portrayal of these things that were not beautiful but rather haunting or so ordinary that it took someone taking to time to portray it to make you see the beauty in it. Anyways, I'm rambling about things other than the book now. I do hope others read the book to experience these things as well.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book, it was very intruiging, especially since I lived in St. Petersburg and am very familiar with the Hermitage Museum. I didn't like the ending, it was very abrupt.
    • 4/5
      The paintings in the Hermitage were evacuated shortly before the Siege of Leningrad. Marina commits them to memory (her “Memory Palace”) to sustain her spirit over that three year period. This is how Dean brings these paintings to life for the reader. You will not want to read this book without summoning the actual paintings on your computer screen. They are really the whole point of the book.One might even say that the advertising term, Borrowed Interest, applies to Madonnas of Leningrad, so central are the paintings to the emotional appeal of the story. Through Marina's eyes, we see an introspective Madonna by Simone Martini, the almost adolescent wonderment of da Vinci's Benois Madonna, and the ripe forms and rippling surfaces of a Madonna by Crannach the Elder. Marina's memories form a sensual tour of the Hermitage's paintings. My advice – make a list of all the paintings in Marina's “Memory Palace.” Then go back and look up the actual paintings. It is in these moments that Marina will seem most real.The story drifts between World War II and the present-day, suggesting the mental drift Marina suffers due to progressing Alzheimer's Disease. It also points out the rich and private lives we live apart from our families – spouses, siblings, and even children. The parts of the book that soar are the dream-like memories. By night the blimps in the sky “swim like enormous white whales through a dark sea. She is swimming with the whales.” This lyricism contrasts with the horror and deprivation endured by the starving inhabitants of besieged Leningrad. Unfortunately, the present-day segments of the story, while poignant, feel flat compared to the richness of the “Memory Palace.” Read this book if you love art history.
    • 5/5
      Alternating chapters reveal an amazing story of deprivation and survival in the depths of the art museum in St. Petersburg during the German seige of World War 2, and the "now" life of two survivors who immigrated to the United States and raised their family in Washington state. A tender romance suffuses the story.
    • 5/5
      There must be so many stories to tell about slavery and the living legacy of slavery. This one starts a little slow but becomes a powerful tapestry. Highly recommend you listen
    • 5/5
      What a beautiful and at the same time impressive and heartbreaking story!
    • 5/5
      Lina is an attorney - an associate in a large firm in NY - trying her hardest to be the best and to get ahead when her boss hands her a case that could make her career. It's a reparations case for slavery; she and another associate are to prepare a brief and find a plaintiff to be the "face" of the lawsuit so that they can sue major corporations for all of the free labor provided by slaves and use the money to fund scholarships, etc.Josephine is a slave, a "house girl" in the home of LuAnne Bell, woman dying from what I can guess to be cancer and a master who beats her and doesn't see her as anything other than property. Her only freedom in her life comes when she is allowed to draw and paint with her mistress - and she has a talent. One very bad day Josephine decides to escape the failing plantation and take her chances at true freedom.The stories of these two women intertwine when Lina, through her artist father and his connections finds that the famous paintings attributed to LuAnne Bell might actually have been painted by Josephine. The foundation that now owns the former Bell plantation does not want this to be true and is doing everything it can to prove it false. Lina feels that a descendant of Josephine's would make an excellent face for her case - if one exists.Before I begin my review of the book I must say that I love the cover. It's so very simple yet it draws you in. I know that had I been in a book store shopping this is a book I would have been drawn to - so kudos to whomever designed it. The story, though, is not simple at all. It's involved, engrossing and for me at least it was impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting. The very first paragraph pulls you into Josephine's story and doesn't let you go. I must admit that Josephine's portion of the book - it is told in a back and forth manner - was more interesting to me but Lina's search for her history was NEARLY as fascinating. I am a lover of the historical so I do prefer the "olden times." It was when Lina's personal life entered the story that I was a bit distracted. All of the hullabaloo about her mother did not lead where I expected it to and in my opinion did not add anything to the plot. That is the reason for my not giving the book a 5 rating.Overall though, I loved it - obviously as I'm keeping this one for a second read. The hubby is reading it as I type and he is as engrossed as I was so it's a book for both genders. It has fascinating characters, a thought provoking plot and it keeps you guessing. What more can you ask of a book?
    • 5/5
      The grand, gilded frames hang empty on the walls of the Hermitage, a witness of hope for restoration of the paintings packed away for protection during the siege of Leningrad. Perhaps they are also a metaphor for the Marina's life - once filled with beauty and meaning, now under siege by a relentless enemy, Alzheimer's.The Madonnas of Leningrad shines like a jewel from its many facets - art history and appreciation, human drama and war, the mystery of the inner person and the heartbreak of Alzheimer's. I was captivated from the first page to the last sentence of this book about beauty, this beautiful book.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful novel, simultaneously searing, heartbreaking and yet uplifting. The character development is excellent; they are multidimensional yet not overworked. The descriptions of the paintings as viewed from the main character's "palace of dreams" are overwhelmingly beautiful and compelling.
    • 4/5
      Well, this one sort of petered out for me. The dual storyline, past and present, just didn't tell much of a story, either alone or together. If one has never read about the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), this is probably a great historic fiction, but I think Hunger (Elise Blackwell) does a much better job in that department, as well as storytelling. As a story about memory and family, well, Madonnas is okay, just a bit dull.
    • 3/5
      This book moves back & forth between Marina's life in 1940's Leningrad and 40 some years later when she is struggling with Alzheimers. An interesting portrayal of that bleak time at the Hermitage and the survival of she and her husband Dimitri. The ending left me in the air & wishing it could have been better for them. A pretty good read.
    • 5/5
      I liked it because it didn't go into too much detail.
    • 3/5
      At times this book was quite lovely (especially when focusing on the museum in Leningrad). Other times I felt it pushed too hard to be sensitive and meaningful and touching. Nicely told, with alternating chapters in past and present, but not quite the extraordinary experience I was expecting.
    • 4/5
      I greatly enjoyed this one. The themes involve memory, beauty, art, deprivation, love, the body and our physical needs, and the relationship between generations in a family. The author moves us back and forth in time from present day to the siege of Leningrad in the 1940's. It is a love story on many levels. Marina and Dimitri are childhood friends who fall in love and become engaged before he leaves for the front. She stays to protect the Winter Palace and the Hermitage Museum where she works and takes shelter. What ensues is inspiring and heartbreaking. While this story is being told, we also find the couple in their later years living in the United States and coming to terms with Marina's declining memory in which her starving time at the Hermitage is more present to her than the present. 4 stars
    • 4/5
      Set in 1941 and the present the Madonnas of Leningrad weaves back and forth in time. The central character, Marina, was a tour guide at the Hermitage prior to the siege of Leningrad during WWII and stayed on living in basement of the museum packing up the art for safe keeping and relocation. One of her coping mechanisms during that period was to remember each painting's details, constructing a "memory palace" in her mind. In the present day we watch Marina's memory fade as she develops Alzheimer's but she is still able to call upon her long term memories in her "memory palace." The book is based on a true story - Debra Dean was inspired by a PBS documentary she saw about the staff of the Hermitage living in the basement of the museum. I originally thought that the device of the empty frames hanging on the wall was just a metaphor developed by Dean to "frame" Marina's memories, but it was based on fact. Dean has an amazing ability to describe artwork such that you can actually visualize the paintings she is describing and those descriptions and past memories help the reader get to know the very private character of Marina.
    • 2/5
      Bored. Two thirds in and still nothing of any actual interest has happened. I’m actually calling it. I can’t bare to spend another five hours waiting. I don’t like to write such a negative review but I can’t say anything else. Clearly others have enjoyed this book but for me it was a struggle to stay focused.
    • 4/5
      As one with Alzheimer's in my family, this certainly struck a chord. The combination of the history, human interest, family, and art made this book a terrific read.
    • 5/5
      Loved the different tones in the characters and the sense of landscape that Josephine and Carolina were attached to.

      The emotional background of searching for lost people added urgency to the plot.

      The paintings were beautifully described, each art piece taking form in the readers eye.
    • 5/5
      I was intrigued by how the story tied together and was left longing for the question of “what happened next” to be answered with the main character
    • 5/5
      The Madonnas of Lennigrad by Debra Dean was a lovely story about a woman at the end of her life, suffering from Alzheimers, who re-lived the early days of her life the surreal world of war and hunger.
    • 3/5
      I wouldn't say I totally loved this although it was recommended to me by someone who did - but it is intriguing - and contrasts a young woman's life where she holds herself together during WW2 by memorising the background on all the great art in the Leningrad Museum; it has been her job to guide visitors and enlighten them but now the art has to be taken down and stored to keep it safe. She and her fellow workers survive on very little food but are determined to still be the keepers of the knowledge and it gives them a purpose - until they are forced to flee. There's a lover invovled as well. The second part of the story follows the same woman with Alzheimers, her long time lover and husband and her daughter- not quite as interesting and rather sad, still intriguing though.
    • 5/5
      A story within a story: 82 year old Marina is slipping into the void of dementia. As she does so, she is taken back to early adulthood where she worked and lived at The Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad during WWII. There is irony in that during the siege in 1941, she used her memory to recreate the Hermitage as it was before as a means to endure the hardships of loss and starvation. In the current day, she returns to that event and those memories, particularly a collection of Madonna paintings as well as others, as her mind slips away from her.A well crafted compact book done in under 228 pages.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful debut novel about art and love and the painful journey that is Alzheimer's disease. The transitions from the present to the past were very skillfully handled, almost as if you could follow Marina's mind slipping from our reality to her own memories of the siege of Leningrad. As for the art, it just makes you want to get to St Petersburg on the next flight . I remember after my visit to the Hermitage I got a big Taschen book with reproductions of the best pieces in the collection but I don't have it in my Tokyo apartment. Well, thank the deities for Google images, because I enjoyed the book more actually seeing the art it describes. Was a lovely read, tinged with a bit of sadness. It is also very cinematic and I hope some day there's an adaptation.
    • 4/5
      Reviewed this for Publishers' Weekly and really enjoyed it. The interplay between the present and the past is deft and meaningful, unlike what we see in some novels with a modern frame for a historical story. The historical plot is interesting and the emotional development in the present feels genuine.