The setting seemed like it would be interesting but it unfortunately did not make it an interesting book.
( )

Listen on Audible.; narrator had a screechy, whiny voice which detracted from the story telling,. Eeva, the protagonist was well developed, but not so much the other characters, with perhaps the exception of the doctor, Thomas and Anna-Lisa, the manager of the orphanage, who was a pragmatic realist. . Ending felt rushed and by then I didn't care about the 'baddie' Sasha. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2018/07/201838-house-of-orphans-helen-dunmore.html ( )

Review: House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore. 05/15/2018

I felt it was beautifully written and Dunmore’s intents to show two sides to the story.
I will admit I wasn’t sure what I was reading at first but it gradually came together for me. Eeva’s life was sad and I don’t believe she ever found happiness.

I preferred the childhood of Eeva and the time she spent in the country with Doctor Thomas. Eeva had no family left in the city of Helsinki and the authorities grab her as soon as her revolutionist father died and placed her in an orphanage at a young age
Not much later she was chosen to live and work for the doctor who lived in the country. That seemed to be a safer place for her than the abuse she received at the orphanage until the doctor started having feelings for her. He was an elderly man and she was still a child. While she lived there he never did anything to harm the Eeva but his love was being noticed by a friend of his. The doctor did all he could to get Eeva to stay and work for him but she wanted to go back to her childhood sweetheart who is now a grown man and he was involved in the fight for freedom against the Russians.

When Eeva left the country to go back to the city life to be with Lauri where she felt she would find happiness. That changed the story in a different direction becoming very political and disturbing. Towards the end of the book Eeva sends for Tomas the doctor and at this time he declares his love for her but she rejected him and he returned to his village. Helen Dunmore goes on describing what happened to the other male characters but I felt it was rushed and not really explained fully how it ended for the characters. ( )

House of Orphans by Helen Dunmore; (4*)

"My talisman, preserve me,
Preserve me through the days of persecution,
Through the days of remorse and distress:
Thou wast given to me on a day of sorrow."

When Eeva's Marxist revolutionary father dies, proclaiming that he has wasted his life, she is sent to the 'House of Orphans' in the Finnish forest far from her home in Helsinki. She leaves behind her childhood friend Lauri and a life of studying at an old card table while "people came and went" and urgent political meetings were conducted - including one in which a murder may have been planned and then, afterwards, carried out.

The main action of this novel begins in Finland in 1901. This is the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire, and following the February Manifesto of 1899, undergoing further "Russification" under the orders of the Tsar and the Governor General of Finland, Bobrokov. The House of Orphans, under the guarded care of Anna-Liisa, prepares its children for service. When Eeva is placed in the house of the Swedish Dr. Eklund, she begins to find herself again. She begins to belong to herself again. She was almost content working for the doctor though she was lonely at first as his home was located in the forest out of the village with no neighbors. Her only company was Matti, the aged gardener who lived in a hut on the property, the good doctor and a woman who came in to take care of the 'good' china. Yet she yearned for the days of her friendship with Lauri and her life in Helsinki.

Meanwhile Thomas, the good doctor, has his own questions to answer. Is he more free than Eeva, even with his big house and servants? Condemned to a solitary life after the death of his wife, and still dealing with the consequences of an affair with a friend of his daughter's, he delivers babies and makes herbal remedies from lemons and nettles. Despite the actions of his friend Lotta and his daughter Minna, he begins to fall in love with Eeva.

When Thomas asks Eeva if she would like to write a letter she naturally writes to Lauri and soon they are reunited. But this poses more questions. In Helsinki Lauri and his new friend Sasha prepare for revolution, and plot the murder of Bobrokov. Eeva does not like that Lauri looks up to Sasha and that he is involved with this plot. Nor does she want to be sucked into something that she does not believe in.

"The wooden marker already looked worn with age. The earth had closed up again over his body. He was there beneath her, actually beneath her. Her father, who had carried her so often on his shoulders.
'You didn't waste your life,' she whispered into the earth."

This novel, part love story, part tragedy, part profound political meditation, shows that Helen Dunmore is back in dazzling form. Her prose as always is exquisite. And she never seems to 'overdo it'. Dunmore is particularly skilled at aligning the domestic with the political. She uses the detail of the past to create a narrative that is complex and contemporary. She is one of my favorite current day writers and I highly recommend this book. ( )