Anastasia Paperback – January 6, 2013

Colin Falconer has written a fascinating variation on the Anastasia myth. The world knows that Czar Nicolas of Russia and his family all died in that cellar on the night of 7/17/18 in Ekaterinberg, since their skeletal remains were dug out of that mine shaft some years ago and DND evidence proved that. However, as Colin writes, "To shoot princes in secret in a cellar, you invite imposters and rumor mongering." And you invite pretenders popping up claiming that the execution squad couldn't shoot straight, and subsequently playwrights and novelists were inspired to dramatize their stories, racking in a lot of lucre. In the context of the 1920s, there was wild speculation that the Bolsheviks couldn't hold onto power and the Romanov dynasty would be reinstated. There was also the prospect for these pretenders to grab the pot of gold that the Czar had deposited in the Bank of England. There were 8 Tzarevichs and 5 Anastasias who popped up all cutting a swath through the capitals of Europe. The most prominent Anastasia was the Polish peasant Anna Anderson, who gained the most notoriety and a circle of hangers-on. This imposter is disparagingly referred to several times in Colin's novel. "She doesn't look like Anastasia and I do," Colin's heroine cattily remarks.Colin has brilliantly recycled the Anastasia legend in creating his own engrossing version of a fictional pretender, a novel which could serve as the basis for a wonderful film. (Ingrid Bergman won the Oscar for Anastasia in 1957, playing Anna Anderson.) In Colin's novel, his hero is Michael Sheridan, an American journalist working in Shanghai in 1921, who meets a Russian émigré, stateless and without papers, working as a dancer and prostitute in a dance hall. He has a one night stand with her and later dives into the Whangpoa River to save her from suicide. Colin spins a page turning saga as Michael falls under her spell and their romance and intertwining lives carries them through stormy vicissitudes against the fabled locales of Berlin, London and New York City in the Roaring Twenties. Besides Michael, Anastasia gets mixed up with the swindler and cross-dressing Russian exile Count Andrei Banischevski, and then the rich Russian Jew émigré Felix Rifkin, but it is always the charismatic Michael that she carries a torch for. Being an enigmatic wannabe princess gives her cachet and a certain allure. This Anastasia Romanov, working as a prostitute and then as a drab law secretary, comes to believe that she really is the Grand Duchess. Well, why not, It's certainly a nice thing to believe for sure.Colin has a gift for writing about fascinating women, his take on Queen Isabella (ISABELLA BRAVEHEART OF FRANCE) is outstanding, and his talent is on full display in ANASTASIA, with sharp characterizations, clever dialogue, and his ability to evoke period details and the political currents of those long-lost times, which are all vividly described. The reader gets a tingly feel of what it must have been like to go mucking about in cafes, dives and speakeasies in those major cities of the world back in the Roaring Twenties. The Wall Street crash of 1929, deeply affecting the lives of Anastasia and the men in her life, brings Colin's story to a dramatic denouement. I highly recommend this compelling novel. .

I was thoroughly drawn into this novel and yes, it was compulsively readable. The descriptions Falconer gives of the worlds of post-war Shanghai, '20s Berlin and London and busy and bustling New York are excellent, and for someone who doesn't like a lot of place description, I devoured this and probably could have read more.BUT... and it's a huge but...The promise of the novel was always that we would find out if the Anastasia of the title was or definitively WAS NOT the one of legend.And here Falconer fails us.Though there are tantalizing hints dropped throughout, the abrupt end of the novel leaves it all up in the air. And this to me is where an author fails his audience.You can't not give us a definitive ending. That's what you've been promising since page one.And that is where the book ultimately fails, as good as it is otherwise.The sense of loose ends not tied up shows up in other places too, esp. in the short and otherwise unnecessary scene where Anastasia is in a Russian ex-pat club and sees a man with piercing eyes sitting next to a known Bolshevik. Who is he? (And Falconer never tells us this--I had to look it up online to find out.) He's the man who was in charge the night the Romanovs were murdered in the cellar.That and Anastasia's inexplicable memories, which pop out at the oddest moments, may lead us in a certain direction, but Falconer never lets us get there. I know that part of the allure for him (as for many others) is the mystery, and not the solving of it. But you can't set up a story like this without the promise of the answer at the end, and though Falconer tries to tell us she wasn't--well--that still doesn't explain the things Anastasia knows or how she knows them, and gives us no hint of who and what she really was. And the not knowing is the ultimate frustration, in a novel that promised us answers. And no matter what it might add to the smoky ambiance Falconer weaves through the novel, a non-ending is simply not good storytelling.I would certainly give it four stars for a wonderful read, but cannot give it more because a reader deserves a final definitive word from the author, and not getting it is a real disappointment.

I loved this book from beginning to end. A young woman, who works in the Taxi Clubs in Shanghai is fished out of the river in 1921 and answers to the name of Anastasia Romanov - I was immediately caught up in the plot. This is a believable novel surrounding the mystery of the Tsar's youngest daughter after their execution, which takes us to Berlin, London and New York. The backgrounds are very credible, especially the New York scene played against the backdrop of the Wall Street disaster of 1929. The Anastasia in this story isn't a fairy tale princess, rather an astute young woman who knows how to get by and survive against the odds. I like Colin Falconer's writing style and his research was very worthy. My only reason for downgrading this to 4 stars is that the kindle version is full of typos and some sentences not completed. This was especially bad towards the end of the story, as if the typist was in a hurry to get home and it did spoil it a bit for me. I would have given it 3 stars for this but I didn't want that to reflect against this well written story.

(review by Cat, not Phil)Man is attracted to woman. He believes that she may be Anastasia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas. End of plot.With the title claiming to be about a 'famous woman', I did expect rather more historical depth; but the cover image should have been enough to tell me that it's actually a romance.The lack of proof-reading lets this book down. 'There is' shortens to 'there's'; so 'there are' should shorten to 'there're'. There is a difference between 'too' and 'to'. 'Compacter dailies' (more compact), 'women's dresses' (womens' dresses) - just to mention a few. Just a hint: if a word is not in a dictionary, it's probably incorrect!

nice to think that anastasia could have survived amid a plethora of books on that subject, this one with a romantic twist.

Quite liked this book though its not as good as some of his other books. Not that he will worry now, but I would think the publishers would go easy on pricing now that the poor chaps gone!

I enjoyed this book it was a different take on the Anastasia story.A very good read as are all Colin Falconer books are.