Four star review, originally posted here on November 15th, 2024.
As with all memoirs, especially translated memoirs, I am not basing my review here on the quality of the writing and storytelling. Instead, I followed along with interest as this legitimately fascinating woman told her life story. On the one hand, I’m a big fan of this lady being a total badass. On the other hand, it was a difficult mental exercise to listen to a tale told by my enemy. Not that Pavlichenko personally is my personal enemy, but I am Latvian-American, and my family fled its homeland after WWII because Soviet Troops invaded and terrorized everyone. Reading from the perspective of a Soviet troop, who was so unapologetically pro-USSR, was a tough read. I know that the Soviet Union was pretty big on propaganda and censorship, so the entire time I was reading, I was questioning how much of what I was reading were Pavlichenko’s own thoughts, and how much was conforming to whatever the Soviet overlords wanted her to tell? Was she really so super blindly patriotic? Did she really think Ukraine was part of Russia? Did she really hate Romanians so much? More importantly, what was she leaving out? What remained unsaid from her tale? Reading this book wasn’t just an exercise in learning about this particular person, it was also an insight in Soviet brainwashing, and an exercise in looking at a bloody conflict from the opposing perspective. And, of course, in drawing parallels to the perceptions of participants on various sides of virtually all conflicts in history, including present day.
I had to say, the audiobook narration for this one wasn’t the best. It wasn’t necessarily the robotic delivery that bothered me, but at times there was emphasis in places that just made zero sense. It honestly felt like it was being read by AI. Maybe it was? I dunno. But it was really weird.
Helga without the H 