MixedThe Guardian (UK)Stalin kept no diary and wrote no memoirs, so these scribblings in the margins become invested with greater significance than perhaps they deserve. Roberts warns against reading too much into Stalin’s decision to underline a line attributed to Genghis Khan ... Roberts is startlingly forgiving towards Stalin ... According to Vitaly Shentalinsky...approximately 1,500 writers perished during Stalin’s Terror. There is surprisingly little focus on their struggle in this book. Fascinating in parts, its promised insight into Stalin’s true feelings remains elusive.
Debora Harding
RaveThe Guardian (UK)...brave and beautifully written ... These fragments of childhood pain are seen through the shifting lens of Harding’s own, less extreme, struggles with parenting, but her book is more than a heartbreakingly disturbing account of childhood abuse in the US, in the vein of Tara Westover’s Educated. A third, parallel strand explores her love for her kind, devoted father and carefully extracts moments of real happiness from the chaos of her early life. Having braced myself for misery, I found these sections the most impressive part of the book ... There is of course no simple or happy resolution to any of this. Harding doesn’t present herself as a triumphant victim who has successfully shaken off her trauma.
