Reviews for In the beginning

The average rating for In the beginning based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-05 00:00:00 Thomas Wasser It is ironic, and not a little unsettling, that as I was growing up comfortably in the US in the early sixties, well, comfortably except for the Russian and nucelar threat, a girl about my age was growing up in Russia having to live in perpetual fear of her parents being jailed for any of a number of random reasons, then by the time she was in her early 20's she herself was imprisoned for writing "seditious" poetry. This book really made me even more grateful for freedom in a land where people can complain against the government without fear of reprisal

Review # 2 was written on 2008-12-16 00:00:00 Tammy Doyle Ratushinskaya is an easy person to like. However, her memoir is disappointing for a lot of reasons. First, I'm not sure her experiences, although they were frightening and a little surreal, warrant such a long and detailed memoir. Her work camp experience as a political prisoner for a few years in Russia (for writing poetry) just isn't that remarkable -- far more people have endured worse and wrote about it more movingly. And the detailed history of her childhood and teen years should have been kept at the private-diary-level only. Some of the blame lies with her translator, who did a poor job with the dialogue -- making it all sound stilted and bizarre. With lots! of! exclamation! points! A better translator might have been extremely helpful to the author. Having said all that, Ratushinskaya is a charming, warm woman who shared the story of her life growing up in the Communist cities of Odessa and Kiev with a sweet openness. And I did finish it, after all, which says something.