My sister and I were brought up on Swallows and Amazons. The idea of going out one morning with a bottle of lemonade, finding an island, fighting some local pirates and being home in time for tea was just to much to resist. So when I found Blood Red Snow White in the school library and realised in encapsulated two of my guilty pleasures – Arthur Ransome and Russia – I knew I was going to enjoy it.
In 1917 Ransome, a young journalist, arrives in St Petersburg, leaving his wife and daughter behind in England. But Russia is changing, and with it Ransome does too, caught between his past and a present he will never leave behind.
Sedgwick begins his story as a Russian fairy tale, describing the Romanovs living their day to day lives under the shadow of their son’s hemophilia, all the time unaware that the great bear of Russia has awoken and, prompted by two men named Lev and Vladimir, is heading towards the city in which they live.
Ransome’s story in intertwined with that of the revolution, the third person narrative making him sound as distant and magical as the fairy tales he has translated. He falls in love, with both Russia itself and a Russian woman, Evgenia. It is this relationship that, for Ransome, blurs the lines between Red and White, British and Russian, Tsar and Comrade, and leads to him finding himself in a no-man’s-land he comes close to being unable to escape.
The second part of the novel tells Ransome’s tale from his point of view, describing the much whispered rumours of his spying past, whether for Britain or Russia. He talks of meetings with Lenin and Trotsky, of fights to get out of Russia and then return again, all the time preoccupied with trying to find a way that he and Evgenia can be together.
I’m a little skeptical about these ‘faction’ novels, where history is filled in with the writer’s imagination. Sometimes I think they make us lazy – why find out about what really happened if I can read a book and someone else can let me know what they think, probably, mighthave happened? But Ransome’s story is one that needs little embellishment. The Secret Service files on his supposed Bolshevik leanings have been accessible for a few years now and practically tell the story themselves. It is Sedgwick’s devotion to Ransome as a writer that means he uses the lines of history carefully to colour this complicated, thrilling and heartfelt novel in.
Having read Russian fairy tales, there is a nagging fear throughout reading the story that something will go wrong, that the ending will not be a happy one. I’ll leave it for you to find out whether or not this is the case for the story of Arthur and Evgenie.
