The Diamond Eye - Kate Quinn

I am an emotional reader. A good story will have me choking on words or in recent times, rewinding and listening to a particular story to sink in the many precious words that leave an indelible mark in my heart. Isn't that the success of a book? The story that moves one's emotions and makes you want to go back in time and be in the company of these beautiful characters.

Kate Quinn's The Diamond Eye is mostly a true story. It has been inspired from Lyudmila (Mila) Pavlichenko's memoir.

She was a young student aiming to become a historian. She was befriended by an older man - a doctor - at 15 and abandoned her emotionally and mentally after the birth of her son. She was the young girl who could talk of ballet and also practice at the shooting range for fun. She enlisted to join the Red Army as a woman sniper, unheard of in those days. She went on to become a celebrated officer of the Russian Army, having 300+ (or more) kills to her name. She was also sent to the US as a part of a delegation that would convince Roosevelt and the nation of sending more help to the front. She goes on to forge a friendship with Roosevelt's wife, which lasted much beyond her job as a sniper. This is the story of a Soviet war heroine.

I don't know if I would have read the book - 38 chapters long, but the audio version was quite excellent. Russian names are difficult to pronounce and Saskia Maarleveld could not have gotten it any better. What fantastic narration! Sharp details of how one trains in the army, how one faces death or how one kills without much emotion makes you draw a deep breath. 

What ensues is a beautiful story, the one that may have been lost otherwise in the pages of history. I loved the softness that Kate Quinn added to the otherwise killer, who killed without batting an eyelid. One quote will stay with me for a long time - the one that says about Mila creating a small journal for her son about the various leaves and trees amidst crouching behind bunkers and aiming to kill. And she says, she had to do both jobs equally well to be recognized as "successful". 

The Author's Note at the end of the book is a brilliant insert as the story is summarized and you suddenly remember all the details that you had listened to for many hours.

Kate Quinn is a fantastic writer and her research is par excellence. As I listened to the Author's note, I kept imagining how she may have sat down and created or more rightly put, brought to life the characters one by one and then woven them all in a riveting story. 

This one, like every story of Quinn's, is worth reading or listening to.