After years of hearing about the epic story by Paullina Simons, I finally picked up The Bronze Horseman. Focusing on the siege of Leningrad during WWII (The Siege is one of my favorite books,) this was just up my alley. The book opens with just-turning-17-year-old Tatiana Metanova on the first day war is announced in Russia. One of many in her communal apartment, Tatiana goes all over the city to buy supplies and food to prepare for whatever the conflict may bring. It is on this fated day that she meets Lieutenant Alexander Belov, who then accompanies her to find supplies and helps her take them home. Their attraction is instant and unspoken, albeit perhaps a bit creepy from his end, but it is not until they arrive back at Tatiana’s family apartment that she finds out Alexander is the man her sister Dasha is dating.
Despite his attachment to Dasha, Alex walks Tatiana home every day from work. It is in these days that they walk for hours on end, talking about their lives, their past, stealing glances, and brushing arms. They are hopeless for each other, and yet it is unspoken because she does not want to be the cause of Dasha’s unhappiness. What’s more, Alex’s friend Dimitri has damning information on Alex and seeks power over him, thus causing him to pursue Tatiana. It’s then that Alexander and Tatiana make a pact to pretend there is nothing between them for both self preservation from Dimitri, but also not to break Dasha’s heart.
While the backdrop and setting of this story are compelling and rife with high stakes, readers will be endlessly frustrated with Tatiana and Alexander’s inability to BE HONEST with each other. Tatiana (also called Tania) always puts everyone else before her own wants and needs, to a point of toxic co-dependent martyrdom. Alex, on the other hand, tries to push others in the family to help Tania in everything she does for the family from cooking, to cleaning, to getting up on the dark and cold winter mornings to fetch the bread ration. Readers will also have a hard time coming to terms with Alex continuing his farce of a relationship with Dasha only to he can continue to keep coming to the family apartment to see Tania and bring the family (her) food. Some readers may grow tired of Alex and Tania going round and round in circles with their exceedingly frustrating dynamic. While Simons’ writing style is simplistic in a Hemingway sort of way, there is something that makes The Bronze Horseman a certified page-turner. Yes, the siege is interesting in and of itself, but perhaps it’s the super frustrating and annoying dynamic between Tania and Alex that keeps the reader turning the pages to see how/if they eventually end up together. I’m all about a slow burn, but this one will sometimes make you want to throw the book across the room. While at times I felt super invested in their relationship, for them to simply finally kiss, there were more than a handful of times I saw red flags with their relationship that did not sit well with me.
While Alex is only about 5 years older than Tania, I felt he constantly infantalized her to the point of creepiness. Yes, she’s only 17, but Alex treats her as a child at times, and even Tania largely views herself as a naive child. His over protectiveness of her comes off at times as red flag controlling. An example of which is when Tania wears lipstick and he literally wipes it off and says he doesn’t want her wearing makeup. While Tania has her own frustrating character traits, she is ultimately of strong will and strong spirit and is very compassionate and loving. She has some very strong, bad ass character moments – particularly toward the end. However, Tania’s kindness and compassion leads many people in her family to take advantage of her and mistreat her. If I were to psychoanalyze Tania, I’d say she suffers from immense low self-esteem (makes sense considering her parents’ treatment of her) to the point where she feels relationships have to be transactional in that she is only of value and can only be loved when she is of service to others. To his credit, Alex seems to discern this and tries to protect her from her family’s abuse and tries to get her to put herself first–especially during the starving times. However, despite not breaking up with Dasha due to a promise Tania made him make not to break Dasha’s heart, I still question his integrity in leading Dasha on only to continue to see Tania. But the reader can plainly see the false prison Alex and Tania have constructed for themselves.
The broader historical backdrop is interesting and well-researched, which I loved, and the characters navigating this brutal and harsh world follows similar beats as The Siege and The Lost Souls of Leningrad. The last maybe 30 – 40% of the book has a bit of a tonal shift. While many narrative and character arcs pay off in a satisfying (albeit still frustrating!) way, Alex starts to become more off-putting. The trope of the over-protective, possessive, jealous lover comes in here which I have never liked and never found romantic, because I view those behaviors as red flags and abusive. Toward the end, he all but physically assaults her by punching a hole threw the wall by her head, violently shaking her, then holding her down all during an argument. What makes the situation even more messed up is the fact that she desperately clings to him like a life raft in an ocean rather than fighting back and being mad at him for his volatile behavior. He continues to infantalize now 18-year-old Tania in a creepy way, his jealousy and possessiveness gets ratcheted up in a very off-putting way that calls to mind how abusive partners try to isolate their partners from their friends and family. What’s equally disappointing is Tania not really pushing back on these red flag behaviors due to her past family abuse and trauma. She puts Alex on a pedestal, much to her own emotional and physical detriment (numerous times!) which spells toxic relationship.
I don’t think I’ve ever had more mixed feelings about a book than this. That said, it was still somehow an engrossing page-turner. The dynamic between Alex and Tania and the dreaded miscommunication trope frustrated me to no end (but in a way that inexplicably made me want to devour more of the book rather than DNF it.) Often times their dialogue is a little weird, disjointed, and confusing (a lot of subtext). I love the setting, back drop, and time period because of my personal historical interests, but a reader might be better suited to reading The Siege if they are primarily interested in those things. My curiosity got the better of me and I looked up some plot points from books 2 and 3 because I’d heard some things, and I was horrified by the complete and utter degradation of Alex’s character in that he walks even further down the road he already began walking in book 1. Knowing that, I don’t think I am likely to read books 2 and 3. This book was engrossing, but I am so disappointed when women writers romanticize abuse and red flags.
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