The epic journey that began with The Revolution of Marina M. concludes in Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, in which passionate young poet, lover, and idealist Marina Makarova emerges as a woman in full during the transformative years of the Russian Revolution. Having undergone unimaginable hardship, she’s now at the height of her creative power and understanding, living the shared life of poetry--when the revolution finally reveals its true direction for the future.
“Before us bloomed an image on the white page — the first line of marchers, the empty cobbled street ahead of them, their dark figures entering from the right, as if from the past. Walking onstage, their mass dividing the sheet in half. I could see history’s footprint in that moment. And I had been there.”
—Marina M.
“Fitch’s darker, equally compelling sequel [to the Revolution of Marina M.] tracks Marina’s perilous journey from 1919 to 1921... Marina’s yearning for freedom propels her to risk everything in the dramatic final scenes.”
“Fitch’s transporting sequel to The Revolution of Marina M. (2017) is even better than the first book. Ceaselessly entertaining through its lengthy page count, it presents a disillusioned, more mature Marina Makarova as she is broken and remade alongside Russia during its civil war….”
“The tumult of the era and Marina’s own impulses thrust her into one desperate situation after another. Her fecklessness could become exasperating if she weren’t such a gifted chronicler of all that she sees and feels, the mundane and sublime all swirling together [...] I found myself slowing as the end approached, wanting to inhabit Marina’s world just a little longer.”
“Marina’s unlikely bildungsroman proves so gripping that it’s hard to put down...Fitch depicts [the Revolution] with devastating accuracy and imaginative power...sprawling, majestic.”
“Sprawling, immersive, and heavily researched.”
“Marina is by turns adventurous, foolish, romantic, self-destructive and courageous in this extraordinary coming-of-age tale.”
“Fitch’s most powerful narrative, beautifully and propulsively written... the opulence and intimacy of the great Russian masters.”
"Finding the true self, asking the fundamental questions, being at agency, is a noble venture, and worth the pain of growth.” Janet Fitch on her central project, beginning with White Oleander all the way to Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. Celebrating 20 years of White Oleander--On the Literary Hub: “Where was my Hero’s Journey?”
"I think what all my books have in common is that I take the internal lives and moral development of women with utmost seriousness."
Janet Fitch and Amber Tamblyn in an ongoing conversation about feminism, politics, history, and more on
CHIMES OF A LOST CATHEDRAL, Janet Fitch’s brilliant sequel to The Revolution of Marina M., picks up right where the previous volume leaves off and continues at the same pace. We are plunged back into a world of furious beauty, sprawling, majestic landscapes, and erotically charged and traumatic encounters, with life and love hanging in the balance.
-Ani Kokobobo at Los Angeles Review of Books
Fitch’s darker, equally compelling sequel [to the Revolution of Marina M.] tracks Marina’s perilous journey from 1919 to 1921... Marina’s yearning for freedom propels her to risk everything in the dramatic final scenes.
"Fitch’s transporting sequel to The Revolution of Marina M. (2017) is even better than the first book. Ceaselessly entertaining through its lengthy page count, it presents a disillusioned, more mature Marina Makarova as she is broken and remade alongside Russia during its civil war….”
The novel is both story and history, which prove inseparable, as the young life of our heroine, Marina Makarova, is upended first by the Russian Revolution and later by the Civil War.
[T]his is an epic narrative that depends very little on the traditional rewards of plot.… Each phase of [Marina's] story builds on the last, and it’s a pleasure to see her develop…
