Parallel lives A love story from a lost continent

Review by Booklist Review

Pears (Arcadia, 2016) tells the unlikely Cold War love story of his friends Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell. Larissa grew up in Leningrad and survived the siege during WWII. She later worked under Soviet rule at the Hermitage Museum as an art curator. Francis grew up in England and became an art historian but felt more at home during his frequent travels around Europe. The couple is introduced by a mutual friend during a trip to Venice and must decide how to navigate their relationship as the Cold War intensifies and they cannot meet regularly without arousing suspicion. Pears uses interviews with Larissa and Francis' diaries to explore their lives and notes where aspects of their separate experiences overlap. He captures the tensions, fears, and bureaucratic tedium of living in the Soviet Union, where no one could be trusted. He portrays Larissa's spirit and mischievousness as well as Francis' crippling self-consciousness, showing their virtues and flaws. An engrossing account of an improbable relationship.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A Cold War romance reveals a lost world of mid-century art, culture, and political adventurism in the exquisite latest from novelist Pears (Arcadia). Soviet curator Larissa Salmina and British art historian Francis Haskell met and married in the 1960s, but not in the way readers might assume--Salmina was no dissident (she had to be talked into leaving Russia), though she was not starry-eyed about the regime either (she joked that her family was fond of Lavrentiy Beria, the notorious head of the NKVD, because he killed the man who tortured her uncle). Pears uses the seemingly unlikely nature of the couple's relationship to explore the era's contradictions and nuances. Of the two, Haskell felt far more repressed--an Iraqi Jew, he never felt accepted at Eton and Cambridge--and it was the open and free Salmina who "saved" him by drawing him out of his shell. Salmina, meanwhile, was not overly bothered by the political repression of her homeland; while still living there, she cavalierly engaged in small acts of resistance without much apparent concern. Yet the two lovers also had much in common. By constructing a carefully layered account of their milieus, Pears shows that they were living "parallel lives" a continent apart, mostly hinging on their commitment to art--a common cultural currency that spanned Europe. It makes for captivatingly counterintuitive view of the postwar era. (Aug.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An international romance. Novelist and art historian Pears recounts the unlikely love story of Larissa Salmina (1931-2024), a Russian art curator, and British art historian Francis Haskell (1928-2000), who were Pears' neighbors in Oxford. Drawing on conversations with Salmina and on Haskell's 60 volumes of diaries, Pears conveys in rich detail the worlds from which the two emerged: Larissa's in the repressive Soviet Union, Francis' in class-conscious England. Their personalities were vastly different: Larissa was a rule-breaker, freewheeling and irreverent; Francis was self-doubting, lonely, and, from long years in one school and another, meticulous in following rules. Larissa feared for her Jewish friends as antisemitism raged; Francis hid his Jewish ancestry. Both were drawn to the arts. Larissa trained in art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, doing so well that she continued directly to a three-year postgraduate course at the Hermitage. In 1962, she was assigned to bring Soviet art to the Venice Biennale--works she lost when the freight car carrying them was decoupled from the rest of the train. Francis was in Venice at the time, studying art history on his own. Through a friend, they met and were instantly smitten. Although Larissa was married, she dived enthusiastically into an affair with Francis, breaking the terms of her visa to travel with him. For his part, he was amazed that anyone would fall in love with him and reveled in the newfound intimacy. Intricate machinations were involved to allow them to marry at Leningrad's Palace of Marriages in 1965. Though Larissa, who never aspired to emigrate, was initially unhappy when they settled in England, her resilience and adaptability, and the couple's shared spirit of adventure, sustained a long, loving marriage. Warm portraits of two singular individuals. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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