The Star of Kazan

Product Information

I liked this a lot, despite that it was NOTHING at all like what I expected from the title and the description. It's the perfect blend of cozy mundane details and outlandish plot twists, with really delicious-sounding food, and exactly the thing you would most like to have happen nearly always happens. Annika has actually signed over La Rondine's jewels, including her famous Star of Kazan, but is unaware of what she has done. In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. Ibbotson has written numerous books including The Secret of Platform 13, Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch?

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson Detailed Review Summary of The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson

The Guardians ask Kira to repair worn historical scenes on the Singer’s robe and promise her the panels that have been left undecorated. In a tiny alpine church, on a June day in 1897, an abandoned baby girl is found by a middle-aged cook from Vienna.Sì perché questa è la storia di una bambina abbandonata alla nascita, che però, proprio grazie a questo trova la sua vera famiglia, l'unica e la sola che le vuole bene.

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson - Pan Macmillan

And she begins to wonder about the deaths of her parents and those of her companions—especially after the seemingly hale old woman who is teaching her to dye expires the day after telling her there really are no beasts in the woods. This spurs Pauline to visit the midwife in Pettelsdorf, only to discover that the women had a stroke twenty years beforehand and can only sign her name. And the author takes the time to show us Annika’s life, from when she is raised as a foundling by a housemaid and a cook who work in the professors’ house in Vienna to when she thinks she has finally found her true home at Spittal with her mother, one of the great “vons”. Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Book Prize Gold Award, was runner-up for the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Award, and was also shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.Annika is delighted but sometimes wonders about the missing piece of the puzzle: the mystery of her real mother and why she was abandoned. She finds a baby in a beautiful church and she and her friend, the housemaid raise the baby like she is their own. One in particular was the attitude towards servants and the expected patterns of behaviour which I haven't seen covered in that way in any other novel. Readers will, though, as piece by piece, the author reveals an elaborate, clever fraud involving faked documents, smoothly plausible lies, and a hoard of supposedly imitation jewelry that Annika has inherited from an elderly neighbor. When her husband was alive he bred snails in the garage; they also kept fish and had a small and very hairy dog.

The Star of Kazan (Audio Download): Eva Ibbotson, Ruth Jones The Star of Kazan (Audio Download): Eva Ibbotson, Ruth Jones

Annika's mother asks her to sign some important documents without really explaining them, and then goes to Zurich. As Annika attempts to adjust to life as an aristocrat, she befriends the stable-boy (Zed) and Spittal's prize stallion, Rocco. Eva Ibbotson wrote this as a tribute to Vienna, the country she grew up in, and sure enough, I only liked the sections that took place in Vienna, not in Germany.This year (thanks to a recommendation by Ella Risbridger on Instagram, of all places) I have binged on Eva Ibbotson, not her children’s books, but her elegantly written, witty and well-observed if (after a few) formulaic fables of emigrées with beautiful burnished hair fallen on hard times.

THE STAR OF KAZAN | Kirkus Reviews THE STAR OF KAZAN | Kirkus Reviews

and they always, no matter how insignificant they are to the plot, have a bit of backstory and a lot of personality. It's not hard to appreciate that Annika's desperation for parental love came from an author who yearned for affection from her rather distant parents. One day while Annika is walking with Zed and Hector, the dog, Hector discovers some remnants of La Rondine's trunk in the lake, but there is no sign of the jewels. The main character is kind and you can really sympathize to her, and the overall plot is well developed. My heart goes out to little Annika, losing all those jewels, but, what can I say, woman, get a backbone.Her mother takes her to Spittal, the family's estate in Germany, and she meets her brother Hermann, her uncle Oswald, and her cousin Gudrun, but she doesn’t enjoy it. After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany. Heureusement, Annika trouve l'amitié auprès du jeune palefrenier, Zed, un gitan passionné par les chevaux et qui rêve de rentrer à la prestigieuse école d'équitation de Vienne. Eva Ibbotson fashioned this novel with all the trappings of traditional fairytale -- the young heroine who finds her situation utterly changed, the acts done out of the kindness of her heart being repaid severalfold, even a young knight on his charger.