Book Review: The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

By Carlotta G. Holton
The Kitchen Boy is a gripping work of historical fiction that entails intrigue, loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness during the last days of Tsar Nicholas and Tsarista Aleksandra Romanov. It is 1918 and in their imprisonment in the House of Special Purpose in Yekaterinburg, just on the Siberian side of the Ural Mountains the family of seven is confined with a small staff including kitchen boy, Leonka. Their story is narrated by 94-year-old Michael (Misha) Semyanov, a Russian immigrant living in Chicago who depicts the bloody days of the Russian Revolution and his role as the last living witness to their savage murders.

There has been much written about the possible survival of one or more of the Romanov children. Alexander, however, serves up another spin. In this well written page turner, he resurrects the previously overlooked kitchen boy, spared by the Bolsheviks, who witnessed the gruesome murders and then vanishes from the pages of history.

The author pays close attention to details. Because of the kitchen boy’s lowly position in the household, Leonka was able to see and hear secret things. Citing and alluding to actual letters and notes in French exchanged by the Romanovs the author adds authenticity to his plot. The reader gets a sense of the day to day life during the Romanov’s imprisonment in which they were “crammed in like herring in a barrel” is depicted with descriptions of windows painted over with lime to prevent a view, limited food and exercise is confined to walks in an unkempt garden.

At every turn they are humiliated and reproached. The guards draw Vulgar pictures on the bathroom walls intended to humiliate and test the patience of the doomed monarchy.
Small pleasures have been denied. The Romanov’s loved photographs and according to Alexander 150,000 photos are in the archives in Moscow and Harvard and Yale. Their prized Kodak cameras were taken save for the one secreted by the only son who suffers from hemophelia. Yet through all their incarceration, the narrator assesses, ‘They suffered well, those Romanovs, they truly did.”

While the family’s zealous religious belief and Aleksandra’s placement of icons on the altar are a strength which unites them, it is also used to attack their attachment to the old monarchy. Through the eyes of the Leonka the reader learns of their close family relationship Aleksandra’s religious zeal their nobility within the confines of their ignoble confinement far outshines their regal existence in the palace of St. Petersburg. As much as the kitchen boy cares for the family, as a man he blames the Tsar for the state of Russia and cannot issue forgiveness. “

Intrigue runs rampant with suggestions of staged escape from Rasputin’s daughter and other relatives.

The book hits on some unusual twists such as Aleksandra’s fascination – which turns out to be eerily precognizant - with the violent end of another hated queen; Marie Antoinette. While the French hated the Austrian woman, she was looked upon as the “German bitch who consorted wit the crazy monk, Rasputin. ON a daily basis Aleksandra and her daughters feverishly stitched their “medicines” - the $500 million crown jewels in their corsets, one is reminded of Marie Antoinette’s brief history with the Hope Diamond. .

Alexander humanizes the royal family. Recalling the tsar he says he was “too nice to be a Tar of Russia.” Yet there is a dichotomy of thought between what the young boy lived and what the old man dictates on the tape recorder. He holds back on forgiveness because he blames the Tsar for the state of Russia. “They lost Russia and I for one no matter how badly I feel about what took place, no matter how terrible I feel for what I did, can never forgive them for that.”

Note that Russia was lost because the Romanov’s never realized that Russia was not a 17th century empire, but a20th century industrial power and society>” Put simply, the family was out of touch with the modern world.

There are twists and turns with hope being resurrected like the religious icons Aleksandra puts out for mass, and then cruelly dashed ending with a final abrupt denouement of the family. Their tale post mortem is no less bizarre as bodies fall from the wagon and the family’s resting place is changed three times.

The narrator looks back on his past at 94 when his wife has died and he is ready to reveal the truth of the experience to his granddaughter with a letter and tape recording. Yet is is only a shade of the truth. Katya has questions about the real identity of her grandfather. Why does her son have hemophilia? Did any of the Romanov children survive the night of terror? What became of the jewels and exquisite Faberge egg collection? As she returns to Russia and learns the shocking identity of her family, she discovers there are layers of truth and that sometimes it is harder to forgive others than to forgive oneself.

Carlotta Holton is the author of Salem Pact, Touching The Dead and Vampire Resurrection, and is a member of the National Federation of Press Women and an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.