The Beginning of Spring, (Paperback)

from k6gst

Frank Reid, a Russian-born Englishman running a printing business in 1913 Moscow, is abandoned by his English wife Nellie and left with his three children to figure out how to make his way forward in uncertain times. Her picture of pre-Revolution Russia is wonderful. Really good—sad, light, funny...

from hansel714

Penelope Fitzgerald has influential family connections, although from the book, she can certainly stand on her own. The Beginning of Spring is set in Moscow, 1913, just before the Russian Revolution. It tells of the family and work troubles of a British printer who is born and raised in Russia. I...

from wandering_star

There are really two stories in this book - the story of the Reid family, a father and three children whose mother has left without warning or explanation, and the story of pre-revolutionary Moscow in the early twentieth century, with its political fervour, traditional customs and complex social ...

from m.belljackson

While pre-World War I Moscow is carefully depicted, it is the vivid rendering of the Birch Trees that carries The Beginning of Spring past characters and plot turns that hold little interest. Older kids talk like mature adults. Frank, the main adult character, was a wishy washy father with a busi...

from japaul22

This slim novel packs a lot in. It's early 1900s Russia, and a British family is living there, running a printing business. In the opening scene, we find that Nellie, the mother, has run off with the children, but gotten cold feet about bringing them and left them at a train station, carrying on ...