READING ROOM:
the latest books, plus a Great Read by Ellen Alpsten
Before Catherine the Great, there was Catherine I, the all-powerful Russian Empress who was catapulted from serfdom to the highest position in the land. Her story is shocking and in UK-based author Ellen Alpsten’s intoxicating hands it’s also a vicious, bloody, sexy romp. This is fearless historical fiction with a sharp contemporary frisson which offers a thought-provoking vision of the brutal, knife-edge lot of women at the time.
The illegitimate, illiterate servant has captivated the author since she first found her in a history book when she was 13. “I wanted to learn more about Catherine but couldn’t. There was no book, no thesis, no biography, no novel, no nothing,” says Ellen. “Yet her reign set the scene for all that was to come in that unprecedented and unique century of female reign in Russia.
“She observes Russia with the eyes of a foreigner, shocking the reader with the opulence of the Russian aristocracy and the deprivation of the Russian people. In Tsarina I attempt to answer the question: ‘So, what was her life REALLY like?’”
The book is told through the eyes of Catherine – born Marta – who cheats death many times and even resorts to murder as she suffers rape and abuse. But her courage and cunning is boundless. Catherine’s path to become Peter the Great’s lover and then his wife blows our mind. “If Tsarina had a mantra it might have been – never give up,” says Ellen. “The Russians are a communal people – the word for happiness – ‘shast’ye’ – means being part of something bigger. She always makes the best of a given situation and never surrenders. She is kind, fun and generous, yet no one takes away what is hers. Whatever fate throws at her, she deals with it, dusts herself off and sees another day … It’s a lesson for all of us … Both researching and writing Tsarina made me think about women’s lives – the ‘good old days’, when social cohesion and man’s limited horizons made for a simpler life, were frankly terrible for women, until war was a harbinger of progress and modernity. In Catherine’s life we witness a milestone in female emancipation and empowerment.”
The descriptions of the excesses of Russian court and battlefield life are eye-popping, with orgiastic parties and vats of vodka consumed. Catherine uses everything in her armour, including her prodigious sex appeal, to get ahead and it is the thriller pacing to Ellen’s storytelling that, even though we know the end, makes us feel there’s a very real chance she won’t make it.