Lost Roses is primarily an exploration of the class divides present in Russia during the time of the revolution and World War I, and the ways in which these class divides affected a wide range of people living different lives. By giving the novel three different perspectives, the author is able to explore these conflicts through numerous lenses, rather than just presenting one singular truth.

The novel follows an “old money” member of the extended royal family, a “new money” philanthropic American family, and a struggling member of the peasant class. The juxtaposition between these perspectives illustrates the immense inequality in the Russian world of the early 20th century and the social, political, and emotional consequences of that inequality. The first two chapters, told from Eliza and Sofya’s points of view, unfold in a world of quiet luxury, prestige, and comfort. Chapter 1 begins, “It was a spring party like any other held in Southampton, with the usual games. Croquet. Badminton. Mild social cruelty” (9).

In Chapter 2, Sofya narrates as she and her sister Luba show their American friend Eliza around St. Petersburg. The city as seen from Sofya’s perspective, prior to the outbreak of revolution, is a space of ease and freedom in which one moves seamlessly from one luxurious entertainment to the next: “Once back in St. Petersburg at our townhouse on Rue Tchaikovsky, my sister Luba and I showed Eliza every literary café and museum, stepping on and off our excellent system of electric trams […] though our home was not far from the tsar’s Winter Palace and the fashionable shopping street Nevsky Prospekt, much to Agnessa’s chagrin, we lived in the second-best part of town, near the embassies” (18). When Chapter 3 opens from Varinka’s perspective, the scene is very different. In contrast with Sofya, Varinka is trapped in her home, caring for her sick mother and fending off unwelcome sexual advances from one man after another. Her dead father’s samovar and the coins buried for luck under the house beams are not portable objects; they are rooted in place, symbols of how bound she is to her meagre home, which is not even a place of safety or privacy, as she shares it with Taras, who has coerced her into a sexual relationship, and as the taxmen freely come in and take the only things she has of any value. As a means of escape, she maneuvers to get a job in Agnessa’s house, but even this turns out to be another trap. By putting these two worlds in sharp contrast, the novel highlights the wide disparity between the way these two social classes live. Varinka’s life is the antithesis of Sofya’s, and not only in terms of strictly material circumstances. It’s not just that Sofya lives in a large home surrounded by servants while Varinka lives in space barely large enough to contain her and her mother and Taras, it’s that Sofya, at the beginning of the novel, has mobility and choice. Her world is large, while Varinka’s consists only of the little house and her mother and Taras and the taxmen who come, bearing the authority of the state, to menace and rob her.

Later in the story, Varinka, Taras, and the other villagers overtake Sofya’s home, and they find their social circumstances unexpectedly reversed. Sofya’s family is starved, brutalized, and eventually killed, while Varinka claims the family’s clothes, living quarters, and even Sofya’s son. Once Sofya escapes, she is forced to live in poverty and fear just as Varinka once did. Varinka and Taras see this turning of the tables as an act of justice, but this new status quo is ultimately unsustainable. Just like the social conditions it overthrew, this new order depends on a total failure of empathy. This recognition lies at the core of the novel: That extreme social inequality corrodes empathy. In the second chapter, the reader learns of an appalling incident in which Agnessa ordered flowers in the middle of winter, causing the delivery girl to freeze to death. The difference in social standing between Agnessa and the girl was so great that Agnessa was unable to see her death as tragic. The girl mattered less to Agnessa than a bouquet of flowers. For Taras, and at times for Varinka, something like the reverse is true. They see the rich not as human individuals but as avatars of the large-scale injustice that has thwarted and damaged their lives. By the time their respective journeys end, Sofya has ascended out of her fragile state—not to where she once was, but to a social standing where she does not have to be constantly afraid—and Varinka is able to begin a new and more fulfilling life. The tumultuous events of the novel have erased the immense disparities between them, and they are both able to look to the future with a sense of possibility and hope.