The Red Scarf

April 7, 2008
Sophia Morozova's relationship with fragile Anna Fedorina begins through a small act of kindness at a 1930s Siberian labor camp. As the two inmates struggle daily to survive, they increasingly rely on each other for hope and comfort; when Anna falls ill, Sophia escapes, intending to find Anna's lifelong love, Vasily, and rescue Anna. Beautiful and charismatic, Sophia quickly becomes a force to reckon with in the town of Tivil, where she hopes to find Vasily, and her connections with powerful gypsy Rafik, the handsome factory director Mikhail Pashin and the stern but unreadable Aleksei Fomenko become satisfying sources of danger and desire. Furnivall (The Russian Concubine
) paints a stark picture of rampant scarcity, grim regimentation and blaring propaganda in pre-WWII Soviet Russia. In pushing the limits of Sophia and Anna's love and friendship, she nicely pits small lives against a monolithic state, paradoxically composed of watchful villages.

June 15, 2008
Can a Russian Gypsy with mystical powers protect a wretched village from marauding soldiers and commissars? Does the daughter of a murdered priest succeed in springing her best friend from a Siberian labor camp? Will an innocent victim of the Gulag find her true love? Furnivall, whose previous novel, "The Russian Concubine", was set in 1920s China, now moves to Siberia in 1933, when Stalin's agricultural collectivization policies sent millions to their deaths. Following the path of "Dr. Zhivago" and the more recent "The People's Act of Love", this romantic confection can make a reader shiver with dread for the horrors visited on the two heroines imprisoned in a labor camp and quiver with anticipation for their happy endings. Furnivall shows she has the narrative skills to deliver a sweeping historical epic, but we get too much of a good thing with a too-convoluted plot and repetitive sufferings. Still, the novel arrives in time for great beach reading and will fit well into the popular fiction collections of most large public libraries.Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2008
As she did in The Russian Concubine (2007), Furnivall again pinpoints a little-known historical setting and brings it vividly to life through the emotions and insights of her characters. Moving somewhere between the romanticized Doctor Zhivago and the grisly Gulag Archipelago, this historical novel portrays the hardships of a Siberian labor camp in 1938 while at the same time dramatizing the philosophical convictions driving both Soviet leaders and the resistance. The story opens with Sofia and her tubercular friend, Anna, slinging sledgehammers in the frozen taiga. Annas storytelling relieves the monotony of their existence while revealing her desperate yearning for her childhood friend, Vasily. Vowing to save Anna from certain death in the camp, Sofia lands on a plan to escape: to find Vasily and convince him to rescue Anna. A somewhat unrealistic but nevertheless riveting story follows: of Sofias adventures crossing the tundra nearly undetected; her arrival in Tivil, where gypsy partisans shelter her; and her dogged efforts to find--but not to fall in love with--Vasily. Page by page the suspense builds until, with the certainty of doom, the reader races to the astonishing denouement. Beautifully detailed descriptions of the land and the compelling characters who move through a surprisingly upbeat plot make this one of the years best reads.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)