I have recently finished this book and had to allow it to sink in before reviewing. It is a beautifully written, devastating novel. The narrating characters draw the reader in slowly to their lives, to the parts of the Second World War which are rarely portrayed through fiction. I also read the additional chapter at the end which covers a portion of Ania’s backstory left out of the novel. The book works without it, even though it is one of the most important moments in Ania's past and gives a much greater understanding of her character. This chapter like so many other moments within the novel was powerful, descriptive and heartbreaking, and manages along with other sections later in her narrative to do the almost impossible - to help the reader to understand her choices.
Admittedly I did not easily fall into the book, but by part two I was engrossed and so glad I didn’t put it down earlier on. In a way the opening up of the narration so the reader slowly gets to know the characters, their truths and their secrets, reflects the wariness of the women, the fear and suspicion. That’s just how I felt having read it once, but it might be that I just wasn’t feeling it as much in my first sitting when reading part one.
All three women have to make impossible choices which they believe at the time to be for the best. All three women are flawed, and see with hindsight what they could not, or would not, see at the time. The stories weave into one another - at the heart is the strength and power of friendship and love, and the will to survive not for themselves but for their children. The novel carefully explores the darkest parts of what it means to be human - an extreme version of things that are relevant today and always have been. It is all the more haunting because this novel is based on real events. What the characters witnessed and either fought against or turned a blind eye to happened, and the experiences of these characters - although fictional - is based on real people of the time. As quoted from one of the book’s final chapters ‘there is so much grey between the black and the white, and this is where most of us live, trying, but so often failing, to bend towards the light.’
The horror of the events of the time will always stay with me after reading or watching something about it, but in this book told through different viewpoints it is also the regret, and the nostalgia for things as they should have been but weren’t, that for me have stayed well past putting the book down, and moved me to emotion during reading.
Admittedly I did not easily fall into the book, but by part two I was engrossed and so glad I didn’t put it down earlier on. In a way the opening up of the narration so the reader slowly gets to know the characters, their truths and their secrets, reflects the wariness of the women, the fear and suspicion. That’s just how I felt having read it once, but it might be that I just wasn’t feeling it as much in my first sitting when reading part one.
All three women have to make impossible choices which they believe at the time to be for the best. All three women are flawed, and see with hindsight what they could not, or would not, see at the time. The stories weave into one another - at the heart is the strength and power of friendship and love, and the will to survive not for themselves but for their children. The novel carefully explores the darkest parts of what it means to be human - an extreme version of things that are relevant today and always have been. It is all the more haunting because this novel is based on real events. What the characters witnessed and either fought against or turned a blind eye to happened, and the experiences of these characters - although fictional - is based on real people of the time. As quoted from one of the book’s final chapters ‘there is so much grey between the black and the white, and this is where most of us live, trying, but so often failing, to bend towards the light.’
The horror of the events of the time will always stay with me after reading or watching something about it, but in this book told through different viewpoints it is also the regret, and the nostalgia for things as they should have been but weren’t, that for me have stayed well past putting the book down, and moved me to emotion during reading.