Anastasia’s Midnight Song by M. Laszlo
Publisher: Alkira Publishing
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Rated: 4 stars
Review by RoseSt Petersburg, 1917
French Huguenot Anastasia believes working in one of Sinai’s mirror factories will allow her to trap the imaginary Arctic Fox which lives in her womb.
Meanwhile, Jack escapes from London and travels to Sinai to avoid being conscripted to fight in the trenches. His strange imaginings do little to alleviate his feelings of cowardice.
When they meet, Jack is seized with a fierce desire to possess her, and nothing can diminish his obsessive urge to be noticed by her, despite her obvious disgust of his crude advances.
Their journeys twist together like a fugue, filled with fantastical delays, as they both fail to accomplish what they set out to do. On a quest for moral truths and unable to escape the consequences of their false beliefs, they relentlessly approach the acute phase of their schizophrenia.
Anastasia’s Midnight Song is a revelatory, hallucinatory account of the growing insanity of two young people who happen to be in the same place at the same time.
M. Laszlo has penned an epic journey into madness doubled, and the intersection of Anastasia and Jack and their issues leads the reader to join their travel. The book is beautifully written and immerses the reader into a surreal and nearly magical world.
The world created for this book goes beyond the physical setting of early 20th century St. Petersburg and introduces the reader into a world that is dreamlike… into the worlds that Jack and Anastasia reside in as their mental problems grow more pronounced. At times, for the reader, it’s not clear what is reality and what is inside their minds. I feel this is the writer’s intent…to draw us into their own thoughts and feelings. To let us feel and see, just for a short time, what it’s like.
This is a book that, while it was sometimes hard to follow it has also proven to be hard to forget. I am looking forward to rereading it, because I think there are even more depths to discover. Thank you, Mr. Laszlo, for providing a deeply satisfying and, at the same time, a deeply unsettling book.
