Maya & Natasha
Twins Maya and Natasha are born into tragedy. Their ballerina mother takes her own life, and the girls are brought up by their mother’s friend, Katusha, and raised to be dancers at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in Leningrad. By 1958, the girls are in their late teens. Ballet school is coming to an end, and the competition heats up for a coveted spot in the Kirov, the premier Soviet ballet company. The girls are close, but very different, and when a government directive determines that only one sibling can join the Kirov, it seems obvious that Natasha, the more flamboyant, outgoing twin, will be the one to succeed. For the first time in their lives, the siblings are rivals – with dramatic and long-lasting consequences.
Durham employs an omniscient narrator which allows her to develop a large cast of characters and move her story across continents and decades. The girls’ paths divide with one continuing in the world of ballet, and the other pursuing a role in a Soviet-sponsored epic film production of War and Peace, blending historical characters – director Sergei Bondarchuk, for example – with fictional ones.
This is an ambitious novel which successfully depicts the dramatic upheaval between the two main characters. Both are fully developed, both are flawed, and their actions – at times jaw-dropping – are shocking but believable. There may be a few too many characters to follow, but that nit-pick aside, Maya and Natasha is a greatly enjoyable, immersive read. Cold War Russia can be fascinating to read about, and this one will surely appeal to fans of Colum McCann’s Dancer and Daphne Kalotay’s Russian Winter.
