Friday Favorites

“The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia” is a collection of heart-wrenching and heart-warming stories of a childhood lived in poverty and persecution. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is one of the New York Times bestselling authors of "There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby."  She is considered one of Russia's best living writers and the author of more than fifteen volumes of prose and is also a playwright. This is her memoir presented in the form of snapshots drawing important experiences in the author's life. Each "snapshot" is a short chapter. The telling moves forward chronologically. What is told of are those experiences that shaped Ludmilla each detailing an incident or a person from young Ludmilla's life. 

After reading two previous very long books for book club, a shorter choice was refreshing. The author writes well and captures the essence of her childhood memories. No unnecessary words. So much is said in such a short book. The writing is strong, full of emotion and there is not a single wasted word. It is important to note is that word FROM in the title is misleading. She does NOT reside in the hotel very long. The book is not about the hotel. 

Ludmilla was born in 1938 inside the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, across the street from the Kremlin. It is the famed residential building that was the setting for "A Gentleman in Moscow." Today it is again a world class hotel. In 1941 her family fled Moscow in a cattle car for Kuibyshev. There they were treated unfavorable and life was brutal. There was little food or clothing and malnutrition ravaging their waif thin bodies; swollen abdomens, dark and sunken eyes, stick thin limbs. Ludmilla's job was to forage through the trashcans of neighbors for morsels of tossed out food long after the neighbors had gone to sleep. I imagine how difficult it had to be for a young child to find scraps of fat and tossed peels of vegetables and fight her temptation to eat it right then, as her belly roars with hunger, not sharing with others. In the wintertime the family had literary nights and her granny would recite classics to them from memory. After the war the family returned to Moscow where Ludmilla was sent off to summer camp because she had become a "wild child." Camp tamed her and she graduated High School despite her poor grades. We follow her through to the fifties when Ludmilla has completed her five years of study in journalism, her travel to Kazakhstan and finally her first radio engagement.

Ludmilla's resilience to a succession of unfortunate circumstances throughout her early life are to be admired. She does not write to ask readers for pity but more to understand how she survived and was able to overcome great odds. 

At a recent dinner party we were able to recreate our own ice cream bar right at home. It was a fun, simple concept that allowed for lots of creative options. We started out with these cute waffle bowls

and vanilla ice cream,We worked our way up to this loaded waffle bowl and in between 

we had several toppings, whip cream, nuts, raspberries, bananas and a few types of sprinkles to choose from. The piece de resistance were Walnut Brownie Bites 
http://sockfairies.blogspot.com/2017/08/brownie-walnut-bites.html

and homemade warm Chocolate Kahlua Sauce. 
http://sockfairies.blogspot.com/2014/05/warm-kahlua-chocolate-sauce.html  

Arizona Sky-like a painting