PositiveBookPageThickly footnoted, illustrated with a wide variety of photographs, and written with an eye toward Nabokov\'s writing as well as his wife, Schiff\'s book paints a comprehensive picture of one of literature\'s more complex couples. She employs interviews with their son, grocery lists, diaries, and correspondence in her work to illustrate the extent of the Nabokovs\' impact on one another ... Schiff\'s depiction reveals an unrivaled intertwining of personalities.
Charmaine Craig
PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of BooksWith Miss Burma, Charmaine Craig accomplishes something many historical novelists do not: the successful depiction of great sweeps of momentous events along with intimate scenes that linger over the most minor, evocative details ... With her war-and-peace, past-and-future concerns, Craig writes about ethnicity with an encompassing eye ... This tension permeates the book as characters must grapple with identities set in motion long before they ever take their own place as actors. War, hunger, jail, coups, bubonic plague: Adversity stalks Craig's characters. She never shrinks from depicting their suffering, but they remain wholly human throughout each trial ... About that violence: There are some unsparing passages in the novel, and knowing that they’re based on fact makes reading them that much more harrowing ... It's these children, in many ways, who most give Miss Burma its urgency and pace ...this novel expertly chronicles a people’s resolve and the metamorphosis of a complicated land.
