Geri Spieler’s first book in her Regina of Warsaw series is based on the story of her grandmother, who fled from Poland to the United States in the early twentieth century.
Regina, when we first meet her, is a young girl living in a traditional Jewish household in Poland. Her world is turned upside down one day when she visits her sister in Bialystok. It’s 1906, and life is simple, safe, and good. One day changes everything.
A good work of historical fiction (or faction, when inspired by real events) should immerse the reader in the places, sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the time we are visiting.
Characters should be clearly defined, motivated, and interesting. As Regina of Warsaw starts in a Poland barely out of the nineteenth century and finishes in a post-Second World War America, there is much to cover.
I liked the character of Regina, and her sister, mother, and the friends she encounters along the way. She has a lot of potential to carry the family stories Spieler wishes to tell.
The male characters are more weakly defined, with both Leopold and Morris, the men Regina lets into her life, feeling rather one-dimensional and not given much space to grow.
The rise of antiseminitism in Poland and Europe, and even the intolerance of immigrants that is found in the promised land of America, is a potent topic for exploration from a historical perspective.
From the pogrom Regina witnessed as a child through to the post-Holocaust realities of the 1940s, there is a lot of injustice in her life that she can’t shake off by moving.
Although this novel is a page-turner and a fairly enjoyable read, it does feel sometimes padded out with description and exposition. A lengthy glossary repeats items described in the text, useful, but we don’t need both.
I wasn’t a fan of the reduction of Regina’s romantic relationships purely to mechanical sex scenes, which jarred for me. It weakened the main character’s progress through her life.
I found myself now and then a little frustrated at Regina being such an activist but unable to fend for herself in the USA by learning English and living on her own terms.
Ultimately, I felt this novel didn’t quite have enough beyond its main theme to keep the interest, and the rushed final chapters felt part of another book, perhaps one that foregrounds Regina’s children.
I’d happily read a sequel to this, but feel it needs more of the epic about it and more of the details experienced by Regina in the moment rather than recounted in her head.
Regina of Warsaw: Love, Loss and Liberation is available now from all good retailers. You can find out more about its author, investigative journalist Geri Spieler, at her website.