An important but unevenly told story.
A fictionalized adaptation for teens of the Holocaust survival story Zail shared in her self-published adult memoir, The Tattooed Flower (2006).
Switching between Australia in 1982 and Europe during the Holocaust, this work presents two distinct first-person narratives connected by one life. The late-20th-century storyline is a work of shallow realistic fiction about teenage Lisa, whose comfortable life is disrupted when her beloved father is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The World War II storyline follows Emil, a Jewish boy from Czechoslovakia who manages against all odds to live through multiple Nazi camps before eventually emigrating to Australia. Only Emil comes alive on the page; Lisa exists mostly as a collection of ’80s pop-culture references and feelings about her father’s revelations. Until his diagnosis, he never revealed his childhood experiences to her. Other characters, including Lisa’s Hungarian mother (whose own Holocaust story is barely mentioned), serve only as window dressing. And yet it’s impossible not to feel the palpable loss as Emil grows sicker and parcels out his past over the course of one Shabbat after another; his experiences (largely drawn from Zail’s father’s life) make the novel succeed despite its other flaws. Major characters are coded white; jarringly, given his own experiences with being dehumanized, Emil describes arriving in Australia and hoping “to spot a kangaroo or a black man with a spear.”
An important but unevenly told story. (author’s note, Holocaust and ALS resources) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781760659394
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful.
January 1945: as Russians advance through East Prussia, four teens’ lives converge in hopes of escape.
Returning to the successful formula of her highly lauded debut, Between Shades of Gray (2011), Sepetys combines research (described in extensive backmatter) with well-crafted fiction to bring to life another little-known story: the sinking (from Soviet torpedoes) of the German ship Wilhelm Gustloff. Told in four alternating voices—Lithuanian nurse Joana, Polish Emilia, Prussian forger Florian, and German soldier Alfred—with often contemporary cadences, this stints on neither history nor fiction. The three sympathetic refugees and their motley companions (especially an orphaned boy and an elderly shoemaker) make it clear that while the Gustloff was a German ship full of German civilians and soldiers during World War II, its sinking was still a tragedy. Only Alfred, stationed on the Gustloff, lacks sympathy; almost a caricature, he is self-delusional, unlikable, a Hitler worshiper. As a vehicle for exposition, however, and a reminder of Germany’s role in the war, he serves an invaluable purpose that almost makes up for the mustache-twirling quality of his petty villainy. The inevitability of the ending (including the loss of several characters) doesn’t change its poignancy, and the short chapters and slowly revealed back stories for each character guarantee the pages keep turning.
Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful. (author’s note, research and sources, maps) (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-16030-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
PROFILES
Not so much one story as three (with a spectral onlooker); fans of the original may enjoy picking out the tweaks.
The March family marches on…in 1942.
Taking Beth, Jo, Meg, and Amy as point-of-view characters, the authorial quartet begins this spinoff with Beth dead but contributing free verse observations between chapters and the surviving sisters estranged. In the least developed storyline, Meg stays home, flirting briefly with being unfaithful to absent fellow teacher and beau John. Jo stalks off to work as a riveter in an airplane factory and (confirming the speculations of generations of nuance-sensitive readers) discovers her queerness. True to character, Amy lies about both her age and her admission to art school in Montreal so she can secretly join the Red Cross and is shipped off to London—where she runs into and falls for wounded airman Laurie. Though linked to the original by names, themes (notably the outwardly calm, saintly Marmee’s admission of inner anger, which is reflected here in her daughters), and incidents that are similar in type, there are enough references to period details to establish a weak sense of setting. Giving Meg and Amy chances to reflect on their racial attitudes through the introduction of a Japanese American student and, in a single quick encounter, a Black serviceman feels perfunctory given the otherwise all-White cast. Jo’s slower ride to self-knowledge, though heavily foreshadowed, comes off as more authentic. If the sisters’ eventual fence-mending is predictable, it’s also refreshingly acerbic.
Not so much one story as three (with a spectral onlooker); fans of the original may enjoy picking out the tweaks. (Historical fiction. 12-16)Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-37259-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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