The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks,: Life and Death under Soviet Rule / Igort, 365 pp.

Igort is an Italian cartoonist who spent years in Russia and Ukraine capturing stories.  His investigations coalesce into two distinct threads: the great famine in Ukraine under Stalin and the murder of journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya.

The organization of the book is occasionally confusing, with occasional switchbacks from 1930s Ukraine to contemporary Moscow and the Chechen conflict and tangential testimonies from other Russians interfiled.  But the material is so intense, horrific, and graphic that it's almost a relief to be disoriented; a straightforward narrative might be unbearable.  

The drawings are perfect: evocative without calling attention to themselves or diverting from the narrative.

Paddy's Lament: Ireland 1846-1847, prelude to hatred / Thomas Gallagher (no relation, that I know of) 345 p.

When I was a kid, my Grandpa practically threw my brother out of the room for wearing a T-shirt with the Union Jack on it (I think it was the Kinks, if that matters...).  It was something we laughed about for years; after reading this famine history it seems a little less funny.  Unlike The Famine Plot, this is not a chronological examination of events and policy; rather, it is a portrait of the experience of ordinary Irish men and women during the famine.  Much of the detail is horrific and gruesome and painfully sad to read.  The latter portion deals with a journey on a 'coffin ship' to New York and the experiences of immigrants' arrival in that city.  This was less interesting to me, probably because as an American reader I have read so many accounts of 19th century NY tenement life for all sorts of immigrant groups that the story loses specificity.  Occasionally too sentimental for my taste, but very vivid.

Dreams of Joy

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See  354 pp.

This book is the sequel to Shanghai Girls and continues the story from where Pearl's daughter, Joy, has run away to join the "glorious revolution" Mao's China. I listened to the audiobook of this and, quite frankly, I couldn't wait for this book to end. Joy has been brainwashed by a group of college friends into thinking that China is going to be so much better than her life in L.A. Pearl, now a widow, drops everything to follow her daughter to China to bring her back and expects to find Shanghai much as it was when she left it. In my review of the previous book I complained about there being too much tragedy, coincidence, heartbreak. etc. In this one I spent a good deal of my time thinking how stupid the main characters were. While the author has done a great job of describing the horrible failures of Mao's regime and the massive starvation and death that resulted from it, things are tied up too neatly at the end. If the author's intent was to elicit strong feelings from her readers, then she succeeded. But I don't think my feelings about this soap opera of a book are what she intended.