The Jewel of St. Petersburg

by Kate Furnivall

Book Overview

The national bestselling author of The Russian Concubine takes us back to Tsarist Russia for a sweeping novel of love and intrigue. Russia, 1910. Valentina Ivanova is the darling of St. Petersburg's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425234231
• ISBN13: 9780425234235
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Captivating historical trilogy

Loved the first two books in this series. Lots of history in these books which kept you on the edge of your seat. It’s also a beautiful love story. Lots of wonderful characters in these books but, of course, there were the villains. I have a third book in this series which I am looking forward to reading.

Fantastic!

I was eagerly awaiting the release of this novel, and I was not disappointed. I fell in love with Furnivall's first novel, The Russian Concubine, a few years ago and since then have thoroughly enjoyed every novel she has written. This novel tells the story of Valentina Ivanova, who happens to be the mother of Lydia--Furnivall's protagonist in both The Russian Concubine and it's sequel The Girl from Junchow. I found this tale of late Tsarist/early Revolutionary Russia incredibily compelling, it's depiction of the dire state of the working class compared with the jewel-encrusted nobility brought everything I learnt in history class come violently to life. Furnivall has done an absolutely brilliant job of portraying the worker's anguish and hatred of their way of life. She makes it clear that they are so blinded by their grim circumstances that they truly believe that the complete obliteration of the upper classes is the only way to improve their lives. Knowing what we do now of Stalinist Russia (which Furnivall writes about in her novel The Red Scarf) it can become too easy for us to think of their plight as non-sensical, as for a lot of Russian people their lives were just as terrible under Stalinist rule as they were under Tsarist. And yet Furnivall urges us to put aside our advantage of hindsight and imagine ourselves as a factory worker in 1910 Russia, whose family is dying due to disease and hunger. She makes it easy for us to see the desperation of the poor, and how violence can begin to seem like their only hope. All in all, a wonderfully written novel, written to the standard that I've come to expect from Ms Furnivall.

deep vivid look at a teetering tsarist Russia

In 1910 Valentina Ivanova is considered The Jewel of St. Petersburg aristocratic society. However, she does not want to be the top diamond as she is uninterested in being the image of the young paragon. Instead Valentina wants to become a nurse and prefers not to wed the chosen Count selected for her. When she meets visiting Danish engineer Jen Friis, she falls in love, but her parents reject the non-Russian working class outsider. As the embittered squabble between the Duma and the Tsar heats up with the Bolsheviks fomenting more trouble, Valentina must choose between the people she love; her younger sister who needs had and her parents vs. Jen who wants to take her and their love child back to Denmark. This prequel to Valentina Ivanova's later tale in The Russian Concubine and her daughter's saga as the Girl From Junchow describes her early days before the Revolution with a deep vivid look at a teetering tsarist Russia. The story line brings out the era while the love story of the Dane and the Russia is beautifully depicted as she as the title character who struggles with heart wrenching choices at a time her world is collapsing. This is a wonderful historical fiction novel. Harriet Klausner

Spectacular!!!

Author Kate Furnivall has written an utterly engrossing story of Valentina Ivanova, a daughter to the finance minister to Tsar Nicholas II, set in St. Petersburg during a time of great civil unrest in Russia's history. The working class and poor are getting more desperate every day as they fight starvation and disease or get injured, maimed or killed at the un-safe factories they are forced to work in while the upper class grow more rich and spend more extravagantly. The Revolutionaries are killing off government officials left and right and Valentina's father is among the targets. Valentina, though born in the upper class, is more interested in taking care of people than of dresses and parties and dreams of one day becoming a nurse. She is a bright, strong-willed girl whom I liked immediately and the rest of the characters were just as engaging - the endearing engineer, Jens; Arkin, the Revolutionary with a heart, Valentina's sad mother Elizaveta and her unfortunate sister Katya. With exceptional descriptions of 20th century St. Petersburg, from the opulent homes of the Russian nobility to the squalid homes of the working class and the underground tunnels beneath the city, Furnivall draws the reader in and the fast-paced action keeps you flipping the pages quickly to see what happens next. Having thoroughly enjoyed my first book by Kate Furnivall, I am now on a mission to own them all! If you like your historical fiction exciting, enthralling and unputdownable, then this is the book for you! Valentina's story doesn't end here, check out The Russian Concubine, which is the sequel to The Jewel of St. Petersburg and tells the story of Valentina's daughter.