The Memory Keeper of Kyiv
Have you heard of the Holodomor, the forced famine in 1930s Ukraine? I hadn’t, although I knew of Stalin’s collectivisation. In Ukraine, an estimated 3.9 million people perished. In the words of a character in this novel: “Everyone wants Ukraine’s fertile soil for their own, and nobody wants to let Ukrainians rule it.” Any book about that country needs to be read, to widen our understanding of what its people have suffered.
In 1929, 16-year-old Katya and her elder sister live with their parents and farm their land, their life bound by seasons and celebrations in a close-knit community. When Stalin’s men come to collectivise the land and impose terror, the graphic horror presents Katya with impossible choices.
Alternating chapters take place in the United States in 2004. Cassie, mourning her husband killed in a car accident which rendered their five-year-old daughter mute the previous year, is persuaded to move in with her ailing grandmother. The grandmother, a Ukrainian known as Bobby—a corruption of babusya, grandma—has never talked about her past. She produces a journal written in Ukrainian, which she wants Cassie to read. A young neighbour, Nick, of Ukrainian descent, translates it.
It doesn’t take the reader long to realise that Bobby is Katya, but we know from Katya’s chapters what happened, so we wait for Cassie to catch up. Cassie’s developing relationship with Nick seems to belong to another book; it might have been more effective if the author had delved more into the growth of Katya’s love for Kolya, a boy in the village, mirroring healing—or not—from survivor’s guilt.
The writing contains a lot of clichés, repetitions, chat, and explaining which, for this reader, detracts from the narrative’s power. The book is also ill-served by poor proofreading. Don’t let this dissuade you from reading it.
