The Woman of a Thousand Names

Starred review from January 27, 2020
Lapierre (Between Love and Honor) serves up a stirring portrait of a sensual Russian aristocrat famous for her charm and “thousand faces.” Three years into Maria “Moura” Ignatyevna Zakrevskaya’s first marriage, at age 18, to Djon von Benckendorff, and facing the turmoil of WWI and the Bolshevik revolution, Moura continues to make new friends and lovers while raising two children. After she meets British diplomat Robert Bruce Lockhart, she discovers true love’s “sensation of lightness” and dives into a tumultuous affair. Their romance subjects Moura to manipulation and extortion by Bolshevik police and the British military, both of which want information from her. Moura is repeatedly arrested, her house is ransacked by rioters, and Djon is executed by militants. With Robert shipped back to Britain, Moura’s passion is reignited by the celebrated author Maxim Gorky, a personal confidant of Lenin. Djon’s family, aware of Moura’s series of lovers, insist that Moura remarry to reclaim her children, leading to a mutually beneficial deal with an alcoholic Baron named Nikolai Budberg. Lapierre evokes Moura’s appeal by moving between the impressions she makes on others, including Gorky and H.G. Wells, and her own deep feelings, meshing history with a captivating tale of a passionate heart. This will move readers. (Mar.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the title of the book.

February 1, 2020

The protagonist of this novel based on a real historical figure was born Maria Zakrevskaya. She led a dazzling life that is now shrouded in mystery. Many say she was a double agent for the British and the Bolsheviks. The author relies on letters, diaries, and other sources to shine a spotlight on events between February 1917 and May 1921. Her status and wealth crater as Russian society collapses under the pressure of Lenin and his Bolsheviks. Lovely Maria survives by being enigmatic, hardworking, and dedicated to survival. Following chapters cover 15 more years of intrigue. Most notably, Maria was the partner and lover of the international hero Maxim Gorky, famed British writer H.G. Wells, and the British agent Robert Bruce Lockhart. Alongside these liaisons are her two husbands, two children, and other beloved members of her household. VERDICT This novel by award-winning historical novelist Lapierre (Between Love and Honor) was first published in French in 2016. The story integrates verbatim quotes with imagined conversations and settings. Realistic yet fantastical in its account of the audacious Maria, this is a rewarding rediscovery of a memorable woman.--Barbara Conaty, Falls Church, VA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2020
The glamorous and fraught life of a Russian aristocrat who survives war, revolution, and several difficult relationships. This massive novel, based on the life of a real woman, represents a huge amount of research by Lapierre (Between Love and Honor, 2012, etc.), as recorded in her substantial bibliography. Maria Ignatievna Benckendorff nee Zakrevskaya, known as Moura, is precociously intellectual, a young doyenne of imperial Russian society. When she marries her first husband, Ivan "Djon" Benckendorff, a Russian Estonian nobleman, she follows him to Berlin, where she becomes the belle of the czar's diplomatic corps. Then, after the Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution, the glittering world Moura knew lies in ruins. She manages to survive by her prodigious wits, her fluency in several languages, and her appeal to men. Scrabbling in Saint Petersberg, Moura is separated from her children, who are consigned to what's left of Djon's Estonian estate after his assassination. Among her conquests are Robert Lockhart, a British agent implicated in a plot against Lenin; Maxim Gorky, the writer who narrowly escaped several purges; and H.G. Wells. The novel has all the earmarks of an exhaustive biography, with quotations from original sources--correspondence, diaries, and press clippings--often taking over the narration. The real Moura kept much close to the vest, including the details of an ordeal in a Bolshevik prison. Lapierre respects Moura's privacy by not imagining the experience--but shouldn't fiction free an author from such scruples? Likewise, on the "hypothetical" question of whether Moura was a Soviet spy, a British spy, or both, Lapierre lets the truth interfere with a good story--fictional Moura never acknowledges, not even to herself, that she's an informant. Nevertheless, as history brought to life through the eyes of one woman whose fortunes took her through two wars and tumultuous regime changes, this account is engrossing, especially as to the particulars of existence in a paranoid, post-revolutionary state with a bureaucratic machine as deadly as it is dysfunctional. Although too long and overly slavish to the record, this multifaceted portrait rescues its heroine from undeserved obscurity.

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February 1, 2020
Was the woman called the Mata Hari of Russia a double agent? Or an informant coerced into using her social standing to deliver carefully curated gossip? In this epic imagining of the real-life story of Moura Budberg, a Russian aristocrat plunged into fighting for survival by the Revolution of 1917, French novelist Lapierre grapples with the slippery legacy Moura left behind. Imprisoned three times in Russia by the government and essentially abandoned by her lover, British secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, Moura must use her charm and intelligence to forge a path forward as her world falls apart. Regularly away from her children and prone to mysterious lightning trips around Europe, Moura was intimately connected to both Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells. Lapierre exquisitely captures the elusiveness of the baroness through the observations of those who knew her, her contradictions and secrets combining to create a multifaceted portrayal of a woman both brilliant and besieged. While Moura's full story may never be known, Lapierre delivers a thrilling rendition of her singular life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)