Firebird – Elizabeth Wein – Barrington Stoke – Review

People say that books are doorways into other worlds, but Historical Fiction doesn’t just open up another world, but also shines a light on parts of history that as lesser known, often forgotten entirely.

We all know about WWII, for people of my generation (I’m right on the cusp of Generation X and Millennial) we grew up amongst people that lived through it, both my grandparents on one side were in the RAF and had medals, my Gran refused to collect hers, and my granddad (twice shot down over enemy tertiary) refused to talk about it. My other grandparents worked the land and were in the Home Guard and saw action discovering a crashed German bomber. My neighbour was evacuated from London during the blitz to rural Oxfordshire, never to return.

Not only were we surrounded by people who survived the war, we were also immersed in literature about it, reading Michael Morpurgo, the Narnia series, and The Diary of Anne Frank, (even watching her father break down in tears on Blue Peter). And watching it, John Boreman’s Hope and Glory, Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, and Goodnight Mister Tom. It’s a part of history we know well, from the troops on the front, the espionage and code breaking, to the way affected civilians in the UK, Europe and the US. Younger generations, may not be surrounded by people that were there, but they are still very well versed on the war experience from the perspective of the allied forces and nations. That is apart from Russia. Russia that fought on our side.

Russia and her people’s experiences and trials through the war have been barely mentioned, much like the German and Japanese’s experiences of the war (Grave of the Fireflies excluded). This is probably due to trust issues as a result of the Russian revolution, after all the Csar Nicholas II, the brutal execution of his children, and then the following cold War. So Historical Fiction really can expand our understanding of historical events by exploring these less written and filmed aspects of our past, and this is exactly what Elizabeth Wein has done with Firebird.

Firebird is the story of Anastasia Viktorovana , as told by her to a tribunal as she stands trial for treason. The first chapter is difficult reading, she is a true Communist, her parents were there at the beginning, fighting in the Red Army alongside Lenin, and her father drove the wagon transporting the corpses of Czar Nicholas II and his family. Anastasia known of Nastia was brought up fighting for the cause, learning to shoot a gun before she could walk. Nastia’s frank and unremorseful talk of these events are hard to read, but there is something that lies between her words that resonates deeply and demands empathy, the fact she is a loyal young girl, who fights for her beliefs but also is very loving and loyal to her family and friends.

Nastia a flight instructor for the Leningrad Youth Aeroclub, and is the only woman except for the Chief instructor. But on the advent of war, Natstia is devastated when she and her fellow instructors go to sign on for active duty, and she is the only one not accepted to fly fighters, despite her greater experience and more flight hours, the men are sent to the war, and she and Chief are left to train a procession of new male pilots. 

The Chief, a formidable woman with short cropped hair, who wears men’s clothes and does her makeup like mask, and (rumour has it) has an taste for expensive French corsets. Is the person who got Nastia her job within the Areoclub, due to her friendship with Nastia’s father. Nastia knows that the chief and her father are close friends, close enough that the Chief to have picked Nastia’s name, but she is an enigma, and Nastia knows nothing about her. All Nastia knows for sure is that her father met Chief around the time of the Csar was overthrown.

Under The Chief guidance Nastia along with a selection of other female instructors train other pilots biding their time until it the females are called on to fly fighters. The night before her first mission Nastia receives news that both her parents have died leaving the Chief as the closest thing she has to family. Loyally Nastia goes in to battle as the Chief’s wingman, but when Chief’s plane is damaged and is under fire she is left with an impossible dilemma leave Chief behind or fall back from the fight and face a treason charge.

When the fight is over Nastia learns the truth about The Chief’s identity and in doing so reveals more about her father and the notion of loyalty itself.

Firebird, really opens a doorway into an aspect of history which is not often discussed, and does so with unflinching directness, whilst empathising and bringing out the universal aspects of the human nature; that most people fight for love and loyalty. But by blurring with the lines between fact and fiction Wein has woven an ending with a twist that is both elegant and poignant that’s akin to the closing scenes of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 Oscar winning epic ‘the Last Emperor’. Firebird is an engaging intelligent read, and well deserves to get on the shortlist for next year’s CLIP Carnegie.