Anastasia

Colin Falconer

Random House

Otago Daily Times, 2003

The fate of Anastasia Romanov, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II  has long been a subject of speculation. Rumours persist that she survived the bloody 1918 execution of the Romanov family, and over the intervening years a number of women have claimed to be her.  It is against this background that Colin Falconer sets his novel Anastasia.

It is 1921, a year after the appearance of Anna Anderson (the most famous would-be Anastasia), and the fate of the youngest Romanov daughter is the mystery de jour.  Journalist Michael Sheridan is working for the China Press in Shanghai when he stops a  Russian prostitute from drowning herself. Her name is the same as the missing princess, she carries scars that might have resulted from bullet or bayonet wounds, a genetic deformity similar to one the “real” Anastasia had, and no memory.  The obvious suspicions arise, and the novel follows their attempts uncover the truth of her past, although this threatens to destroy their own happiness.  Anastasia leaves Michael twice to marry men who promise (for their own reasons) to prove she is the lost Romanov princess. Michael’s search begins as an attempt win her heart, then as a way of freeing himself from his infatuation with her.

Falconer has obviously done a great deal of research, and the novel follows an “epic” sweep from revolutionary Russia to New York just before the Wall Street crash.  Unfortunately, it is spoiled by indifferent prose, and I found both Michael and Anastasia two dimensional and unengaging. This book joins my list of novels that have been dispatched to the second hand shop rather than my own cluttered shelves.