Review: The Kitchen Boy -- A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander

Book #92 is the third book of the year involving the Russian Revolution, and the second of pure fiction -- but the first that I really was getting into.  

The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar, by Robert Alexander, is a historical fiction novel written in 2003, four years before the ultimate fate of the Romanov family was revealed.  An elderly Russian emigre named Mischa records the tale of his escape from Russia following the Revolution, when he was a young kitchen boy named Leonka, serving the deposed Tsar and his family during their last days at the Ipatiev House in Ekatrinburg.  As the youngest person in the little "family" made up of royals and their servants, Leonka comes and goes as he pleases, without raising suspicion amongst the Red Army guards or their leader, the cunning and heartless Yakov Yurovsky.  But when one of Leonka's missions goes awry and the guards take action, Leonka is left with an incredible sense of guilt -- and a secret that even eighty years later he can't bear to reveal.

SPOILER ALERT.

I really liked this book, until the last two chapters.  Mischa's story about his life in Ekatrinberg as the kitchen boy Leonka was riveting, and my favorite kind of historical fiction -- the kind that you know isn't true, but the kind where there's no evidence to prove it wrong.  There really was a kitchen boy to the family of Tsar Nicholas II in captivity, and his name was Leonka -- he was around the same age as the Tsar's son, Alexei, and he was the only one of the servants who was not taken to the basement and shot to death.  I thought that the story was absolutely riveting, as well as how neatly Alexander ties up the fates of the two missing bodies, those of Alexei and the Princess Marie Nicholaevna, the Tsar's third daughter.

And then came the final chapter, about Mischa's granddaughter Katia going to Russia after hearing his story, and discovering that Mischa's whole tale was a lie -- he was not the kitchen boy, Leonka, but a soldier in the Red Army who was in the basement that night, carrying out the execution.  Instead of watching the horror from outside the Ipatiev House, he was the soldier assigned the task of executing the Princess Marie.  Wracked with guilt following the brutal murders, he saw two bodies bounce out of the lorry traveling to the burial spot -- those of Alexei and Marie -- and realized that Marie was still alive.  Given one chance to redeem himself, Mischa saved Marie, took her to America, and made her his wife.

I hate to say it, because so many people loved it, but this ruined the book for me.  It's a wonderful story, but that's just the point -- it's a story, and was so far-fetched it didn't even seem plausible.  That a Red Army soldier at the time of the Revolution would risk his life to save a dying Romanov grand duchess is romantic and interesting, yes, but impossible to conceive, and impossible to imagine him getting away with it.  My disappointment primarily stems from the fact that I thought this was going to be a plausible historical fiction book, and went along with believing Mischa's story (as Leonka) the whole time.  I'm not a fan of the deus ex machina tool in writing, where the reader can't figure out the story by him/herself, and that's probably where my feelings of negativity come from.  Still it's well written, and I'll be picking up some more of Alexander's books.

Rating: ***