Rasputin

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Perhaps even more than Stalin or Gorbachev, the Russian name that still captures the Western imagination is that of the illiterate Siberian peasant and alleged holy man Rasputin (1872-1916). His apparent ability to restore health to Czar Nicholas II's hemophiliac son and the immense political influence he thereby won, leading to his assassination by jealous nobles, helped precipitate the Russian Revolution. Myles ( Prince Dracula ) combines elements of titillating romance, imagined stream-of-consciousness narrative and dialogue with his facts--much of the last based on the diaries of Rasputin's daughter Maria. Some of this amalgam is unabashedly melodramatic. Without seeking to rehabilitate his subject, the author cites the Byzantine tradition of itinerant seers, whose sexual excesses, like Rasputin's, were as notable as their miraculous healing powers. Photos not seen by PW. (May)

Library Journal

Rasputin, the controversial religious man who influenced Russia's Alexandra and Nicholas II--and national politics--through his ability to aid their hemophiliac son, receives sympathetic treatment in this new biography. While acknowledging Rasputin's weaknesses as an adventurer and seducer of women, Myles credits Rasputin with extraordinary powers of healing and clairvoyance. He relies upon a variety of secondary sources from Russian history as well as parapsychology and the occult. Myles's effort to make Rasputin more comprehensible by adopting his perspective is sometimes confusing. Better books on the subject are Joseph Fuhrmann's Rasputin: A Life ( LJ 11/15/89) or Alex DeJonge's The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin ( LJ 4/15/82). Not recommended.-- Rena Fowler, Northern Michigan Univ . Lib., Marquette