I must confess that my heart sunk slightly when I picked this book up - reading the back, and looking at the cover, it looked like the kind of historical misery-lit that I normally avoid. I thought it would be all gloomy and depressing and overly dramatic but actually, it was none of those things and I really enjoyed reading it. I found the characters, and the storyline, believable and the whole situation, whilst being terribly sad, wasn't over-egged.
I think the best historical fiction teaches you about the period whilst still creating a story and characters that you enjoy reading about, and I think this is a book that does both those things. I knew absolutely nothing about the siege of Leningrad before the book (shamefully, I'm not sure that I even knew it had happened) but I now want to go and look up some more information about that period.
Dunmore's writing very cleverly encapsulates the way that the horrific gradually becomes the normal, and the way that the character's lives draw in upon themselves until the tiniest things - a spoonful of honey, a jar of jam - become the most important. And I loved the details of Russian life, and the descriptions of Leningrad and the Russian countryside - it's made me want to go back to Russia to see all these places!