Winterland
A Novel
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Winterland
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Narrated by:
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Daphne Kouma
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By:
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Rae Meadows
About this listen
"Daphne Kouma offers a beautiful performance, meticulously detailing 8-year-old Anya's experiences. Kouma's credible Russian accents and outstanding character development make this a story filled with heart that listeners won't soon forget."- AudioFile Magazine
Perfection has a cost . . .
Reminiscent of Maggie Shipstead’s Astonish Me and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth, Winterland tells the story of a previous era, shockingly pertinent today, shaped by glory and loss and finding light where none exists.
In the Soviet Union in 1973, there is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen to be part of the famed USSR gymnastics program. So when eight-year-old Anya is tapped, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago her mother disappeared. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years in a Gulag camp—and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance. As Anya moves up the ranks of competitive gymnastics, and as other girls move down, Anya soon comes to realize that there is very little margin of error for anyone.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.
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Critic reviews
"With meticulous precision and smart, poetic prose, Meadows vaults us into the chilling and eerily relevant world of Soviet-era gymnastics. Get ready to fall in love with eight-year-old Anya, who offers us a heart-wrenching view of what it means to live, love and compete in a sport where one wrong move or the whisper of dissent can ruin you. This book is full of heart." —Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones
"Winterland is a story as gripping as it is a powerful rendering of the true cost of perfection. In beautifully written, thrilling prose, Rae Meadows takes us deep into the world of the USSR’s gymnastics program. As we see eight-year-old Anya rise to the top of this ultra-competitive and punishing sport, the mystery of the disappearance of her mother begins to unfold. Combining a page turning plot with fully formed characters, Meadows has written a novel that reflects the current moment. I was left breathless." —Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept
“Quoting aptly from the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva and liberally slinging Russian vulgarities along with gymnastics lingo, Meadows [...] captures the risks so recently headlined by Simone Biles and other champions in her fifth novel…Spanning the final decades of the 1900s, [Winterland] is a genre-bender that fluently integrates sports with accents from political and psychological thrillers.” —Library Journal
What listeners say about Winterland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- S. C. Eves
- 10-01-23
Wow...just....wow!
I loved this book.
As someone who was a child of the seventies, I idolised the USSR gymnasts of this era, particularly Natalia Shaposhnikova.
This book transported me back to that moment in time.
The harsh realities of life as an elite gymnast of that era, the backdrop of 1970s USSR, the interwoven back stories of other characters.
The narration was superb.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- The Curator
- 05-12-22
Harsh world made manageable with love
This story of a soviet gymnast looks at the last years of the Brezhnev era and the cruel system that raised athletes, skaters and gymnasts. It’s not depressing though. The heroine is surrounded by love and a great cast of characters. For one who was a child in love with gymnastics and Nadia Comaneci, it was a fascinating look at this world.
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