A Doll's Memory

A woman suffers from gaps in her memory and to fill them she borrows from the story of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II.

She is variously known as Anna O., Fraulein Unbekannt, or Anna S. Her desire to be known as Anastasia parallels the attempt by a woman known as Anna Anderson who also made a similar claim.

Both are fished out of a canal after trying to kill themselves. We follow Anna through the different elements of the Anastasia story as she tries on identities like a series of Russian matrioshka dolls.

The other characters in the novel are: Nicholas and Alexandra and their children; the soldiers who guarded and executed the royal family; Tschaikovsky, who supposedly rescued Anastasia and brought her out of Russia; Rasputin, the starets and healer to Alexandra and her hemophiliac son, Alexis; and a psychiatrist who sometimes takes on the persona of Sigmund Freud.

Though the story has elements of a tragedy, it is really a mystery story about identity and memory and filled with humour as the doctor and the woman engage in a battle of wits and play tricks on each other. 

A bizarre twist at the end fits the “riddle of Anastasia” and like Winston Churchill’s comment about Russia made in a radio broadcast in October 1939:

"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.”