Author Interview: Susanne Dunlap

First I'd like to thank Susanne for taking the time to answer my questions. I read and reviewed Susanne's first YA novel The Musician's Daughter, back when I was blogging over at My Favorite Author.

I was thrilled to get a copy of ANASTASIA'S SECRET which I wanted to read ever since she first mentioned she was working on a book about the Grand Duchess in our last interview! I hope that this little Q&A will get you even more excited about reading this book, for I truly did enjoy it!

My Pile Of Books: You obviously put a lot of research into your work. Which do you prefer more, the research or writing fiction?

Susanne Dunlap: Definitely the writing, but the research inspires me. When I'm researching, I'm itching to start putting the story together, to bring the characters to life.

MPB: ANASTASIA'S SECRET is more than just a fantasy version of what might have been. What do you hope your teenage readers take from a more true to life story of what happened to the Romanovs?

SD: I know some people will wish that I had done it differently, but what inspired me about her story is that she wasn't a little girl while all those awful things were happening to her family, she was a teenager. I wanted to explore what it must have been like to come of age in the midst of all that, through the contrast between unimaginable luxury and the horrifying prospect of a terrible end.

MPB: Why were you drawn to Anastasia as a narrator?

SD: She's a shadowy character in history, described as the "clown" of the family, and as the youngest (and unwanted) fourth daughter of an imperial couple who yearned for a son. I felt she must have had some pain in her life, some feeling for her second-class status, and that the conflicts in her heart—between being a loving sister and perhaps envying the position her two older sisters and younger brother had in her parents' affections—deserved to have a voice. I also wanted to give her more of an independent life than she is portrayed as having in history.

MPB: Besides Anastasia who in this novel was your favorite character to research and write about?

SD: Hmmm. I think possibly there isn't an individual one, but discovering the roles of the members of the household and the servants, and what they sacrificed to stay with the family, was quite a revelation.

MPB: Can you tell us about what you are working on now?

SD: My next novel is about a young parlor maid from the East End of London who stows away to go with Florence Nightingale's nurses to the Crimea.

MPB: What have you read in the last few months that has blown you away?

SD: I've read an unpublished manuscript by a dear friend that has really blown me away, and the soon-to-be published novel Claude and Camille, by Stephanie Cowell. It's the story of Claude Monet and his lover Camille, set in that incredible time for the art world in Paris. It's a very tender love story, and an evocative setting. As for teen books, the novel I Am Rembrandt's Daughter by Lynn Cullen was fabulous.

*Thank you again Susanne for being part of our blog!

Review ANASTASIA'S SECRET by Susanne Dunlap

ANASTASIA'S SECRET
by Susanne Dunlap
March 2nd 2010 by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children's Books
Hardcover, 320 pages

Placement in the Pile: Reaching New Heights

Summary:
“Will I never see you again either?” I asked, feeling as though I was about to jump off a high mountain peak and hope to land without hurting myself. That’s how impossible everything seemed at that moment, no matter what I did.

“Perhaps we will meet again,” Sasha said, softening his voice. “But you must see that it does not matter. You have so much ahead of you. It’s your choice now. Choose the future! Choose life!”

For Anastasia Romanov, life as the privileged daughter of Russia’s last tsar is about to be torn apart by the bloodshed of revolution. Ousted from the imperial palace when the Bolsheviks seize control of the government, Anastasia and her family are exiled to Siberia. But even while the rebels debate the family’s future with agonizing slowness and the threat to their lives grows more menacing, romance quietly blooms between Anastasia and Sasha, a sympathetic young guard she has known since childhood. But will the strength of their love be enough to save Anastasia from a violent death?

Inspired by the mysteries that have long surrounded the last days of the Romanov family, Susanne Dunlap’s new novel is a haunting vision of the life—and love story—of Russia’s last princess.

Review:
Unlike fantasy versions of what may have happened to Anastasia and her family the Romanovs, this story takes you deep withing their world in a "what might have been" story.

Dunlap writes expertly, capturing the voice of this once Grand Duchess in her childhood through teenage years. Her sweet innocent voice juxtaposed with the intense realizations of a Russia that is falling apart, a world full of poverty, hate and a Europe-wide war, Anastasia's voice comes through in this novel more than anything. I was captured by the voice from the beginning and I literally could not put it down.

This inside peek as to what it would be like to grow up sheltered from the world, befriend a soldier and be shown why the people are so angry with her family was a great way to imagine the young Anastasia's life. Shasha, the young soldier becomes Anastasia's love interest in the book in a powerful setting of what might have been for this princess.

I liked this novel more than Dunlap's first young adult novel. It is long, but I was so captured by the story that it didn't matter. I wanted to keep reading, to experience this time in the life of you youngest Romanov daughter. I have always loved the story of Anastasia, but most of the stories I know involve magic and mystical powers. This is a much more historically accurate story of what happened to the family, and for that I am grateful it is out there.

I do have to say that I would rate this PG-13 as there is some sexual content and blantant talk about Anastasia's physical development into womanhood. It is never base or disgusting, but it is there.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for my interview with Susanne Dunlap!

*Book source disclosure: I was sent an ARC of this book by the publisher.