Journey to Moscow

Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne

    

Writer's Notes

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The experience

The Story

The Reviews

An Extract beginning

'Here in the narrow crampness of Caitlin’s Moscow flat, I breathe in ...'

The Experience

As a child of the Cold War I was fascinated to visit Moscow just after the 1991 Yeltsin Coup, when my daughter was resident there, While I was in the city (as is my habit) I filled six notebooks with sketches and written impressions.

I was particularly intrigued to meet a middle aged American woman who lived there. She too  had visited her daughter the year before and fallen in love with the city. She had gone  home, gave up her job, sold her house and returned to Moscow to live as a Muscovite. 

Several years later my six Moscow notebooks became - with additional extended research the basis for this novel about the Adventures of Olivia Ozanne: Journey to Moscow.

The Story

Olivia Ozanne has no intention of getting involved in anything except an interesting holiday in Moscow. But when she meets Volodya at a flower stall, everything changes. 

This fast-paced story is set in 1991 Moscow when Russia is changing from the inside out. Olivia, a rather dizzy divorced children's writer, visits her ambitious journalist daughter, Caitlin, and becomes involved this post glasnost society in a state of radical change. 

This strange world fascinated Olivia drawing her in like a magnet. She meets an ancient British spy and comes upon an old English woman whom Volodya calls the Brown Auntie, who has been marooned in Moscow since the 1917 Revolution. There is a Grey Auntie too who may or may not be the Brown Auntie’s sister.  And there is the spy who is also involved in their story. Olivia tries to untangle the story of the two old women and discovers a strange story of  twentieth century Russia.

Together, and in conflict with her daughter Caitlin, Olivia and Volodya connect the Brown Auntie’s past to the turbulent present in Britain.  So far from relaxing on holiday, Olivia Ozanne has the chance to restore the Brown Auntie’s identity and forging a new one for herself.

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Extract from Journey to Moscow.

From Chapter 2

‘… Here in the narrow crampness of Caitlin’s Moscow flat(standard for all foreign journslists), I breathe in the cooking smells that are creeping under my bedroom door: an enticing mixture of coriander and dill, purple basil and turmeric. Out there, voices are raised in dispute. I can hear Caitlin being firm but fair, like a good mother, and the dispute fades. I feel sympathy for the maid Katya who has to come to terms with the fact that cleaning and occasional cooking for a Westerner pays infinitely better than being a teacher of small children, the job for which she was trained. We have both been teachers. We have that in common, Katya and I. But I don’t think she knows it.

It was Katya who shoo’d me out of the tiny kitchen as though I were a small child, cross at me for peering into her oven. Caitlin, annoyed at being upstaged by her staff, actually grasped my arm and steered me out of the kitchen, and told me, in the voice of a good mother, to go and put my feet up, rest before the party.

I hear Caitlin running her bath and feel glad for Katya and her friend Linia, glad that they can have a breathing space now, without their employer crowding them, souring their sauces.

I don’t like Caitlin, you know. Don’t like her at all. Any more than I liked my mother. It was a great relief for me when I realised that though we were genetically alike, the architecture of our flesh and bones sharing similar structures, I did not have to be like her. I need not panic about the tests of endurance and cruelty which she set me. As an adult I can forgive her, rationalise her actions through the abstraction of academic study of the pathology of childhood. This helped me to see that the cruelties were unforced if not unintentional.

Even so, what I cannot forgive her is that all that training in . . . endurance . . . has meant that I could not really love my own daughter. And even as a baby Caitlin knew this.

But I still remind myself that without Caitlin I wouldn’t be here in Russia, which is already filling my senses, as I knew it would. For so long I have wanted it, to be here in this strange country: a country which has been with me all of my life., alongside my world, like a half-seen winter shadow.

I suppose I know as much about Russia as anybody else of my generation: the intricate stories of Chekov, grand historical sweeps of Tolstoy and the black worldview of Dostoyevsky were the richest of food for my starved childhood imagination. ‘Idiot’ was an epithet my mother frequently spat at me, so I leapt on Dostoyevsky’s story with frantic relief. My mother’s wartime fantasy with the notion of ‘Russkis with snow on their boots standing fast in Stalingrad’ has echoed and reechoed in my mind for nearly half a century, reduced now: distilled to a joke. And then there was ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin. Then, alongside The Female Eunuch, literary images of the romantic Lara, of the Gulags, of the varied nightmares of Siberian exile and torture in the Lubianka portrayed in popular fiction. It’s as though the adventure fantasy can neutralise the cruelty and allow us to absorb the sense of this country into our souls.

Then, with the Fifties and Sixties came the Cold War: the build-up of bile, the paranoid fear of infiltration and engulfment, which was somehow healed in my young mind by Marxist ideals and notions of peace and love. Then, when I was still consciously political, I toyed with the notion of Marxism as a grand scheme for justice and equality, only to abandon it as the Soviet Russians marched into Budapest. I feel sure that the Russians were devastated at my defection.

But we knew we were safe, didn’t we? Wasn’t Russia this great hulking backward continent, after all? Like the idiot son? Then one day we were catapulted out of our provincial patronage, into the shock of equality as Sputnik twinkled in our skies intensifying the balance of fear and respect which was the high-octane fuel of the Cold War.

‘Mother! Bathroom’s clear.’ Caitlin’s face pops round the door like an elegant, stray balloon. Her eyes bulge slightly as she notes my naked state. ‘Really, Mother! Remember how small this flat is! You might have a modicum of decency.’

I pull my dressing gown to my chest, meeting her gaze calmly, even bravely. Modicum of decency. That was one of Kendrick’s favourite phrases. He started to use it on me like a spare flail only a few months after we were married. It only took him those few months to realise that I wasn’t the mild little primary teacher he had proposed to in the cinema one night, after watching Paul Newman flashing his big blue eyes in a forgotten film called On the Terrace. I see Mr Newman’s selling a rather pretentious brand of pickle in his old age. How glamour dies.

There is a red spot on each of Caitlin’s beautiful cheeks. ‘It’s the staff, Mother! Katya might come in any second. I told you I stored the spare plates under that bed. It would embarrass her, finding you like this.’

I stand up and pull on my gown, tying it tightly round my waist. ‘I hear you,’ I say, picking up my toilet bag and towel. I peer out of the window, down at the littered square which stands at the centre of the rearing blocks of flats built specially for foreigners in the 1970s, and the tram terminus beyond. ‘How you can live here without a scrap of green defeats me.’

‘Oh, Mother!’ Caitlin says. ‘You can be such a trial.’ She vanishes, her rage expressed in the tight click of the bedroom door behind her.The table is crowded, the dining-room so small that Katya and Linia, demure in black with frilly white aprons, have to squeeze by to serve from their heavy platters. I am wedged between Charles Conrad, a burly British newspaperman, for whom I think Caitlin probably carries a bit of a torch, and a man called Jan, a willowy type from the Dutch Embassy who I think probably sleeps with this same Charles Conrad.

The talk, having started with Caitlin’s  description  of her projected thousand-mile trip to Perm, to visit the last political prisoners, soon dissolves into gossip about an Italian diplomat who is tangled up with the daughter of a lieutenant in the burgeoning Russian Mafia. Charles Conrad talks about the Gulf War, which he covered for his paper. He stayed in Amman. ‘. . . never did reach Baghdad, unfortunately.’

’Then someone tells yet again the story of howm suring the recent coup the American Ambassador’s wife took great stacks of pizza to the protesters on the barricades And some so-called inside stories of Mr Yeltsin’s prodigious appetite for vodka.

Caitlin stays silent at this stage of the discussion. To her eternal rage, she’d been on home leave during that crucial week of the coup. She was in London promoting her new book on the implications of glasnost. So she missed the whole show. The  girl  opposite me, the German wife of a Turkish diplomat  leans  forward, her  chiselled face, keen in the candlelight, her pale eyes meeting mine. ‘I believe you write children’s stories, Mrs Ozanne?’ she says politely. ‘

Yes,’ I say, ‘I do.’ There is nothing else one can say, isthere? My voice falters into a sudden pool of silence. The others have stopped refighting the coup.

Charles Conrad stirs beside me. ‘Children’s writer? Should we know you Mrs Ozanne? Do you write under your own name?’

This is such a common question. At this point I usually make a sarcastic apology for not being Beatrix Potter or Enid Blyton but Caitlin throws me a glance and I swallow it. I smile sweetly. ‘Yes I do write under my own name and no, probably you don’t know me.’ I say. ‘Children’s books are––’

‘Are you published?’ Charles butts in, with a journalist’s desire to get at the value level of a story.

From the top of the table Caitlin is leaning forwards. ‘Is it your tenth or your eleventh book, you’re on with, Mother?’ I admire the affecting layer of pride she has painted on her face. Or is it genuine? She is so hard to read.

‘My thirteenth book, and yes, Charles, they’re pub- lished. By Walton Books in England––’

‘And America and the rest of Europe,’ puts in Caitlin eagerly.

Charles looks at me thoughtfully for a moment. ‘And are you enjoying your visit to Moscow, Mrs Ozanne?’

‘It is amazing, wonderful,’ I say. ‘I’ve dreamed of coming here many years. It’s strange, exotic, mundane by turns and . . .’ My voice tails away. Looking round the table I see I have done the wrong thing. Such enthusiasm can be so provincial.

Charles raises a finely arched brow. ‘Interesting,’ he says. Then his glance flickers away from me to the Dutchman on my other side. ‘Now, Janni, how did the meeting with the Americans go?’

The conversations around the table – half work, half play– begin again and the room buzzes with relief at having dealt, politely enough, with the rather embarrassingly enthusiastic stranger.

I sit back, duly dismissed, relieved to be out of that scorching spotlight. Katya leans across me to collect my plate and I catch her scent, an old-fashioned odour of soap and dust. ‘Madam?’ she says softly. I know I have more in common with her than with any of these news-hungry high-fliers around Caitlin’s table.

I want to tell her that I, too, was once a teacher like her, but Katya and I cannot surmount the impenetrable language bar- rier. We tend to smile and nod a lot. And I feel embarrassed when Caitlin has one of her paddies and lashes out at Katya in her impressive Russian, gargling the words like a native.

I will learn Russian. I will!

Caitlin taps her glass and we are ordered to the tiny drawing-room which opens from the hall. We are just settled in our seats, receiving our coffee from Katya’s friend Linia, when the telephone rings.

A slight tension crystallises in the room: despite glasnost the telephone here has so much more significance than at home. There are no telephone directories, no way you know someone’s number unless you are given it directly. The telephone is a lifeline, a crucial contact; for these journalists it could throw up a bit of information which might make this week’s great story, a satisfying by-lined piece to be splashed across the headlines in a dozen countries.

And here, to add to the frisson, we know that the phones in this foreigner’s building are still tapped. Caitlin, however, is blase´ about this. She has a theory that there are so many thousands of calls these days, and the government is in such a bureaucratic mess, that the tapes are not listened to with any consistency.

Caitlin picks up the phone and the room falls into an avaricious silence. My daughter, with her perfect Russian and her wide network of contacts, is often the first to pick up new trembles, new fissures in the fabric of this crumbling society. She is often first with a story. I know this because she has told me that she is famous for it.

She’s talking into the phone now, in rapid Russian. There are bright red patches on her flawless cheeks. She raises her eyes angrily to me. ‘It’s for you, Mother,’ she says fiercely, holding up the phone and waiting while I scramble to my feet and make my way across the crowded room.

Volodya’s voice comes down the line. ‘Olivia? Is that you?’

‘Yes,’ I mutter hoarsely. ‘It is me. What is it?’

‘Will you meet me tomorrow?’ His voice was urgent. ‘Will you be there at the flower stall? You will be there?’

A dozen eyes are watching me. I press the receiver hard to my ear so they can’t hear his voice. ‘Yes. No. I am not sure.’

‘You must come.’ His voice is rasping into my ear now.  ‘I have something important to tell you. An amazing thing. I have just discovered it. A fa-antastic thing.’

‘How did you know where to ring, Volodya?’ I turn my back to the company, shutting out their veiled, hungry eyes. ‘How did you find me?’

His warm chuckle at the other end of the line forced a smile to my own lips. ‘No problem, dearest Olivia. I just rang your daughter’s office and told them I had a hot story for her. So, they gave me her number. Quick-as-a-flash, don’t you know! You will come?’

‘Mother!’ Caitlin is breathing down my neck. She is reaching for the phone. I pull away from her.

‘I have to go, Volodya!’ I say desperately.

‘Will you come?’ His voice is urgent, insistent.

‘Yes! Yes.’ I smash the phone back in its cradle before Caitlin can get at it.

The silence in the room is finally broken by Caitlin’s slightly nervous laugh. ‘Mother, you do get in some pickles!’ she says. She turns to the company. ‘Do you know I had to rescue her once after she had fallen into a canal in Amsterdam, chasing some thief who had snatched her bag?’

‘Don’t be silly, Caitlin. You came to the hospital and brought some flowers. Hardly rescuing.’

‘Intrepid!’ says Jan the Dutchman. ‘You were fortunate not to get your throat cut, Mrs Ozanne.’

Charles Conrad sits back comfortably in his chair. ‘Don’t tease Mrs Ozanne, Janni. In all probability she was gathering copy for her kids’ books. Five Run Riot in Amsterdam and all that.’

There are grins at this. I take a look round at the keen, young faces before returning to Charles Conrad’s bland smile. ‘Don’t be so bloody patronizing!’ The words chip their way through my gritted teeth.

Caitlin puts a hand on my arm, ‘Mother, I––’

I turn and stump to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I stand with my back to it and wait while the talk wells back to its normal social purr. No doubt they’re pleased to be rid of me. I relax a little then, stripping to my skin, ripping off the carefully chosen clothes, which I know still make me look too fat. I hesitate a little, but remembering Caitlin ’s strictures over my nudist tendencies, I pull on my nightie and dressing gown. Then I go to stand at the window and lean my head against the cold pane. Eyes wet with unshed, angry tears I watch the dimly lit trams as they trundle their way round the terminus, and peer at the shadow of the warehouses against the inky green filigree of the garden ring. Green! There is som green, of course. I suppose I was wrong to tease Caitlin.

There is a knock at the door and I keep my back to it as it opens, waiting for the douche of Caitlin’s icy contempt.

‘Madam?’

It is Katya with a small tray covered with a lacy cloth, on which steams a cup of frothy hot chocolate. I sit down hard on the narrow bed, scrambling in my sleeve for my handkerchief.

Katya places the tray on the bedside table, then she puts a hand on my arm and flings her head back towards the door. She says something in Russian which I don’t understand.

I smile then, and my tears dry back into my sockets. ‘You’re right, Katya. They’re silly people,’ I say. ‘Bloody silly people.’

She nods and glides quietly out of the room.

I reach out for my chocolate and begin to lick the sweet froth from the top. One thing is sure. Wild horses wouldn’t stop me meeting Volodya by the flower stall tomorrow.

Outside, in the hall, someone has put on some music, drowning the chatter and spurts of laughter. Miles Davis. Cool. Mellow. I brought the compact disc with me to Russia, as a present for Caitlin. It strikes me that, in playing it now she is making one of the complex, inexplicit apologies she always offers when she knows she has gone too far.

Content now, I slide down onto my pillow, wondering what fa-antastic thing Volodya was so excited about.

I’m just slipping off to sleep when I remember that tomorrow Caitlin’ll be on her two-day trip to Perm. That’s a blessing. I won’t have to worry about her all day. I tuck the thin blanket under my chin. At least the coast will be clear. That is, if I can head off the delightful Piotr, who will no doubt be here at the crack of dawn, to get his bodyguard briefing.

‘Now close your eyes.’ Volodya’s wiry hand grips my elbow as he guides me along.

It’s an hour since we met at the flower stall and since then we have been walking the streets. He’s showing off the unseen places of his city and I am drinking it in not just with my eyes, but the very pores of my skin. From time to time I ask him what is this fantastic thing, this thing he wants to show me? But he just shakes his head. On one corner we pass a man with the the large hat and the insignia of a general carrying a briefcase. It strikes me thst I’ve  never seen so many military men with briefcases in any city.

(Last night, tucked up in my narrow bed, the laughter of the dinner party dying outside, I read a short story by Gogol called The Nose, where the administrator calls himself a major. Perhaps soldiers with briefcases are not necessarily a post-revolutionary phenomenon.)

Now Volodya leads me out onto  onto the Boulevard Ring and sit on a bench watching an elegant white dog - a stray -stalking an Alsatian on a lead. The owner finally yells at the white dog, and chases after it. It skitters away with ethereal grace through the sparse grass and the old bare trees.

As we walk on from there a ribbon of shock flutters through me at the sight of the chiselled features of Lenin: a relief medallion on a wall. It is defaced by a vulgar splash of red paint. I’m used to and amused by graffiti at home, seeing it as the scribblings of the dispossessed, who merely enjoy a kind of power to irritate, like starlings in cities. Only on have I been shocked as much as this: in a derelict chapel in the North where my mother lives. The chapel was littered with paper detritus used condoms and expended aerosols. My flesh crept as I read foot-high letters scrawling out the words BLODY VIRGIN MARY WAS A HOOER.

We wend our way through  a series of derelict streets. Volodya makes me close my eyes. The streets become even narrower; the walls exhale the breath of ten generations. His hand is on my arm, his dry palm over my eyes.

‘Now!’ he says.

I blink in the light.

We are standing under a wide gateway at the end of an unexceptional alleyway. A tree to my right, half yellow, half green, wilts under the assault of Moscow’s ‘fast autumn’. On my left is a battered building, painted peeling cream. Squeezed in between these two stands an exquisite church, its fine new plaster painted in candy pinkand pointed in white with a high tower and a golden dome glittering in the morning sun.

‘Volodya!’ I am choking. ‘It’s beautiful. Exquisite.’

‘This  is the church of the Archangel Gabriel,’ he said. ‘Myself, I am an atheist. I have always been in favour of the secular state. But there is something fine, very human now, in the way the people are now beginning to restore and repaint the churches, repossessing them for their own.’ He pulls at my arm now. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’

We enter through a narrow door, past a cluster of elderly women, obviously the keepers, minders of the church. Inside, the church is surprisingly small. Proportionally, the height is the most important feature. I lift my eye to the inside of the cupola to find the face of Christ peering down on me in my smallness.

‘Such places make you wish you believed, in something,’ I say softly.

He laughs grimly. ‘Such places make me think of the gentleness and sweetness of the people they enfold. Of the strength of the builders. The delicacy of the painters . . . Not of Gods or false prophets.’

One of the old church keepers shuffles forward. She raises her squirrel-bright eyes to me, and I blink my recognition. It is the ‘Brown Auntie’ from Volodya’s flat.

She speaks to Volodya, gesturing towards me.

‘She says she will show you their most precious icon,’ he murmurs.

We follow her into an even darker interior space. Reverently, from a carved box, she takes out a small icon. The semi- precious jewels and the gold inlay catch a beam of light from the high window. The serene contours of the face of the saint locked into eternal lines showing a passive strength and a jewelled certainty.

I catch my breath and put a hand towards it, whispering ‘Utterly beautiful. So still.’

‘It was hidden away during the Great Atheism.’

My head jerks towards Volodya’s face, which has not moved a muscle. The voice is not his.

The wavery sound goes on. ‘We hid the icon in a secret place, in an outside wall.’ My hair raises slightly on my scalp. The voice is rusty with disuse, but it is an English, not a Russian voice. I put a hand on the shoulder of the Brown Auntie, and turn her towards me. Then I watch her face as she speaks again. ‘Not just me, pet. There were others as well. And other sacred things. But they were stolen by the atheists.’

I can hear a soft fragment of a soft accent. Durham, Cumbrian perhaps.I grasp the old woman’s shoulders more closely. ‘But you’re English! But you can’t be. Here in Russia. You’re Volodya’s Brown Auntie . . .’

Volodya is frowning, watching us intently. She pulls down my hand and turns it in hers. ‘Don’t take on, pet. No need to take on like that.’ She is smiling, her scanty teeth turning her grin into a grimace.

‘But how . . . when . . .’ I am spluttering, excited. My blood is pumping through my veins.

Her hand tightens on mine. ‘Wait, will you? Go home to the apartment with Volodya. My work here finishes here at three. Mebbe we can talk then.’ She turns to Volodya now and pushes my hand into his, talking to him in rapid Russian.

He smiles down at me. ‘We must do as we’re told. She will come to the flat at three.’

‘Will she tell me, talk to me then?’ Suddenly I want to know it all. I have to know it all. I know I am ridiculously eager: like a child who has to have all the sweets in a packet at once. ‘Did you know?’

He shrugs. ‘I hear her voice in yours when you speak. She talked to me this morning, about you, who you were. Hearing your voice yesterday . . . there must have been something. I knew that she and her sister were different, of course. They speak old-fashioned, superior Russian for a start. And the Brown Auntie sings songs in French to the Grey one. But I have only known them ten years. They gave me a room in their apartment and now I pay their rent. I know little else about them. It’s like that in Moscow. In some ways it always was.’

I turn back to the Brown Auntie, but she’s already turning away, to talk to more visitors, tucking the precious icon deep in the pocket of her bulky coat.

We walk out of the crepuscular space into the dusty sun- shine. Volodya is grinning broadly. ‘That is a fine surprise, is it not? Two surprises. The lovely church and the intriguing Brown Auntie.’

‘Did she tell you to take me there?’

He nodded. ‘She said she would have a fine surprise for you. I thought it was one of her precious icons.’

‘So you were surprised too?’

‘I knew she was different. A very gentle soul. And sharp, with those bright eyes. And the aunties have never talked to me of their past.’

‘Well,’ I say with more certainty than I feel. ‘They will now. We’re going to your place and I’m not budging till she tells me who she is and why she’s here.’

‘They will only tell you if they wish. The Grey Auntie will tell you nothing. She is what you call gaga. She must be ninety-five if she’s a day. Ten years ago she was not so bad. But the Brown Auntie is younger, she has – how do you say it? – still got all her marbles? Got all her buttons on?’

‘But she must intend to tell me about herself. Why else would she choose to speak to me like that?’

‘You’re right! Who could disagree with you, with that earnest face of yours? Now! Have you got dollars?’ he says chang- ing tack.

I frown. ‘Yes! Why?’

‘Champienski! We will celebrate the rebirth of an old Englishwoman, and the bubbles will loosen her tongue.’

‘And,’ I say firmly, ‘you will tell me about yourself. I have escaped my captors . . .’ Caitlin must be ploughing around the permafrost of Perm by now. She assigned Piotr to take me to see Lenin’s tomb, but I’ve given him the slip. ‘. . . and have been trailing around with a man I don’t know from Adam. You could be a mass murderer.’

He flushes, and his arm drops from my elbow, ‘You think that I am like that, I––’

‘Don’t get huffy. That’s a joke.’ I put my arm through his. ‘Now we will get the champagne and go to the apartment.’ We stride along in companionable silence, successfully obtain the champagne from the unlikely Irish supermarket and flag down a car to take us straight back to the apartment.

It’s only when he is turning the key in the lock that Volodya speaks to me directly. ‘This huffy, Olivia. What is that?’

Reviews & Scroll down for chapter extract.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Love Story to a City and its People, 12 Feb 2014

Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Kindle Edition)

Olivia Ozanne is the writer abroad, the stranger alone, a woman who can see the surface of things and beyond. Well rid of her ex Kendrick and his leather sofa fetish, she comes to stay with her daughter Caitlin. This is post-glasnost Moscow with its fallen statues, burgeoning mafia, newly restored churches, its phones tapped but no longer listened in to, a city that demands hard currency. Through Olivia’s eyes we see into the heart of this city and its people. We peer inside their tiny flats into their constricted interior lives, where we meet the mysterious Aunties whose surprising histories, stretching back to the revolution, are slowly uncovered by Olivia.
This is a richly painted canvas of an iconic city, in many ways relevant to our understanding of the Russia of today. It is a story about a woman in search of a new self and it’s hard not to fall in love with Olivia with her enormous appetite for life or for that matter her lover Volodya who she meets at the flower stall. I fell in love with them both. But Wendy Robertson’s greatest gift is in making us fall in love with the place and its people. Gorgeous

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful novel. I loved it., 26 Jun 2014

 This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Kindle Edition)

Olivia - what a fascinating character who ‘goes her own way’ regardless of others. This is an excellent story and I couldn’t put it down. The depiction of post Glasnost Russia is realistic. There is more freedom. Calls are recorded but no one listens to them. However, there is still much suspicion and the drivers want ‘dollars’ in payment for taxi rides. Olivia takes no notice of her successful daughter who worries that she is in a city that can be fraught with danger. However, Olivia is determined to be her own person and thank goodness, because she meets Volodya who becomes the love of her life and she becomes special to him. The setting and atmosphere of Moscow are cleverly created, with old cars, run-down buildings, people suspicious of their neighbours in case they report them to the Authorities, the flower stalls and also the beauty of the Churches and the priceless icon that the Aunties take to their Church. We are sad that Volodya seems to have a new love and Olivia returns home bereft. However, it turns out well in the end. Relationships are very important in this novel. We have the mother/daughter relationship that can be fraught at times, the love of the two Aunties which has lasted for decades, Kendrick who is an unpleasant character and hasn’t treated Olivia well and the relationship between Olivia and her son, who goes through a hard time with the police. The relationship of Olivia with her own mother has been very difficult and when her mother dies, she is in a quandary. Once again, she makes her own decisions and takes no account of the views of others. She does what she feels is right. This is a fascinating and very readable novel and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. 

5.0 out of 5 stars In Search of Fairy Tales, 19 May 2014

 This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Kindle Edition)

Once again Wendy Robertson has produced a novel with a difference.
Its diverse and fascinating characters are dealt with in her own inimitable way,producing a story that is not be missed.
Told in the voice of Olivia Ozanne, who writes stories for children; these characters cover a vast variety of life-styles as well as a wide age-range, but are all equally convincing.
The novel is set against the stark background of post Glasnost Moscow, but also offers a glimpse of a north of England, peaceful on the surface but with a drugs problem beginning to raise its ugly head.
I recommend this novel to you. Read it. You will enjoy it.

  

5.0 out of 5 stars Kicking heels up at the past, 27 April 2014 

 This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Paperback)

Moscow is going through upheavals as it emerges uncertainly into a post-Glasnost era. Writer Olivia Ozanne, visiting her very correct and successful daughter, is going through a few upheavals herself as she burrows under the skin of the city, discovering secrets - and her own true self. Joyous.

5.0 out of 5 stars Colourful story set in post-Glasnost moscow, 7  

This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Kindle Edition)

Post Glasnost Moscow, dreary, edgy, but along comes Olivia Ozanne, edgy herself but with a sparkle that transcends the drabness. She bursts into the confined world of the intriguing Volodya and his 'two aunts' sombre in their grey and brown and soon discovers their colourful story. On the way embarassing, successful journalist daughter, Caitlin in a recognisable volatile mother/daughter relationship.
Olivia in mid-life uncertainty is looking for more than a holiday interlude and within the fortnight her artistic fingers, with the precision of a compass draw all the strands together. The author is here at her very best showing the basic humanity of her main characters whether English or Russian, especially the 'brown aunt.'
I have always wanted to stand in Red Square, step inside a Dacha. I have now and in the memorable company of Olivia Ozanne.

  

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read., 21 Mar 2014

This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Paperback)

Wendy Robertson's latest book is a real gem. Set in Russia post Glasnost and in the UK, it is a novel about relationships of all kinds: with children, husbands, lovers, friends and strangers. The reader is quickly charmed into this world where it seems anything can happen, if your mind is as open as Olivia's. This main character's narrative voice is enticing and cajoling as it guides the reader into both Olivia's internal and external landscapes and asks you to share her joys and dilemmas but try not to judge. The internal situation in Russia is exposed layer by layer through the people Olivia meets, the things she observes and also what she has read. Her Russian lover, Volodya adds further dimensions to the Russian story but also to the character of Olivia and her joy in living.
The 'Aunties' are enchanting and would have made a novel on their own. The whole idea of them meeting in a world hostile to their love for each other and also the actuality of their joint experiences through such a tempestuous era is exciting
And threaded through all this marvellous storytelling and characterization is Olivia's experience of being a writer; having to make uncomfortable choices, to find the nub of magic at the core of any good story and discover how to execute the narrative. It is the honesty and self-knowledge of Olivia Ozanne that gives this novel its momentum and keeps the reader entranced to the end.

Its diverse and fascinating characters are dealt with in her own inimitable way,producing a story that is not be missed.
Told in the voice of Olivia Ozanne, who writes stories for children; these characters cover a vast variety of life-styles as well as a wide age-range, but are all equally convincing.
The novel is set against the stark background of post Glasnost Moscow, but also offers a glimpse of a north of England, peaceful on the surface but with a drugs problem beginning to raise its ugly head.

I recommend this novel to you. Read it. You will enjoy it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Kicking heels up at the past, 27 April 2014

 This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Paperback)

Moscow is going through upheavals as it emerges uncertainly into a post-Glasnost era. Writer Olivia Ozanne, visiting her very correct and successful daughter, is going through a few upheavals herself as she burrows under the skin of the city, discovering secrets - and her own true self. Joyous.

 5.0 out of 5 stars Colourful story set in post-Glasnost moscow, 7  

This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Kindle Edition)

Post Glasnost Moscow, dreary, edgy, but along comes Olivia Ozanne, edgy herself but with a sparkle that transcends the drabness. She bursts into the confined world of the intriguing Volodya and his 'two aunts' sombre in their grey and brown and soon discovers their colourful story. On the way embarassing, successful journalist daughter, Caitlin in a recognisable volatile mother/daughter relationship.
Olivia in mid-life uncertainty is looking for more than a holiday interlude and within the fortnight her artistic fingers, with the precision of a compass draw all the strands together. The author is here at her very best showing the basic humanity of her main characters whether English or Russian, especially the 'brown aunt.'
I have always wanted to stand in Red Square, step inside a Dacha. I have now and in the memorable company of Olivia Ozanne.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read., 21 Mar 2014

This review is from: Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne (Paperback)

Wendy Robertson's latest book is a real gem. Set in Russia post Glasnost and in the UK, it is a novel about relationships of all kinds: with children, husbands, lovers, friends and strangers. The reader is quickly charmed into this world where it seems anything can happen, if your mind is as open as Olivia's. This main character's narrative voice is enticing and cajoling as it guides the reader into both Olivia's internal and external landscapes and asks you to share her joys and dilemmas but try not to judge. The internal situation in Russia is exposed layer by layer through the people Olivia meets, the things she observes and also what she has read. Her Russian lover, Volodya adds further dimensions to the Russian story but also to the character of Olivia and her joy in living.
The 'Aunties' are enchanting and would have made a novel on their own. The whole idea of them meeting in a world hostile to their love for each other and also the actuality of their joint experiences through such a tempestuous era is exciting
And threaded through all this marvellous storytelling and characterization is Olivia's experience of being a writer; having to make uncomfortable choices, to find the nub of magic at the core of any good story and discover how to execute the narrative. It is the honesty and self-knowledge of Olivia Ozanne that gives this novel its momentum and keeps the reader entranced to the end.