The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia By Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

The prizewinning memoir of one of the worlds great writers, about coming of age as an enemy of the peopleand finding her voice in Stalinist Russia

Born across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotelthe setting of the New York Times bestselling novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor TowlesLudmilla Petrushevskaya grew up in a family of Bolshevik intellectuals who were reduced in the wake of the Russian Revolution to waiting in bread lines. In The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivationof wandering the streets like a young Edith Piaf, singing for alms, and living by her wits like Oliver Twist, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer.As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringingof feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the dining tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of foodwe see, both in her remarkable lack of self pity and in the two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged.

From heartrending facts Petrushevskaya concocts a humorous and lyrical account of the toughest childhood and youth imaginable It [belongs] alongside the classic stories of humanitys beloved plucky child heroes: Edith Piaf, Charlie Chaplin, the Artful Dodger, Gavroche, David Copperfield The child is irresistible and so is the adult narrator who creates a poignant portrait from the rags and riches of her memory. Anna Summers, from the Introduction The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia

it is an interesting insight into a childhood without limits how one child can live life on the streets in times of war and chaos. 014312997X From the title and description of the book, I expected . I am sorry for the author's childhood and young adult deprivation, but to me, the book did not live up to its reviews. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Interesting for the history of the time but I found it poorly written and hard to follow. Perhaps part of it was reading how difficult this young girl's life was. counter-culture A fascinating look at growing up behind the iron curtain counter-culture Reading. 978-0143129974

The author is a master story teller with the ability to keep a tense and dark subject light. She was able to keep the unseemly parts of her existence in Russia in the periphery, noticeable but out of the main story. It puts first world problems in perspective. 176 pages But in an obtuse way. To realize the hardships these people endured is to understand the brutality of the Soviet Union 978-0143129974 Excellent story proving that there are some people who cannot be defeated by circumstance. However, the end seems to leap to its conclusion and leaves many steps to success omitted. Yet it is a reassurance that whether the girl is from the Metropol Hotel or the slums of and 1 more , Kindle, Paperback I am a member of a contemporary Russian literature reading group that read this book. It is a tale of the fall of the author’s family from the Bolshevik nomenclatura to “Enemies of the people” under Stalin and of her subsequent self reclamation. (We had previously read 014312997X Overall, this was an interesting read. It was hard to follow in a few places, and some parts of the story seemed disconnected how did she go from basically being a feral, homeless child to going to a nice school and college but I guess weirder things have happened! Ludmilla Petrushevskaya