News of our loved ones, by Abigail DeWitt

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Abigail DeWitt

In this novel we follow the history of a French family in a little village throughout several decades and places. Beginning in 1944, a sixteen-year-old girl is secretly in love with a boy who passes by their house riding his bicycle every day at the same hour and, thanks to her daydreaming about her love for him, the Nazi occupation of the village and the sirens wailing each night disappear from her mind. But in the end the place is bombed by the allies, and the family members will be separated at this particular moment in which lives and dreams are lost forever.

Every chapter is told from the point of view of one character in a certain stage of the family history, and sometimes we come back to this French village in the forties, but other times we find ourselves various decades later in Paris, and it is as if each chapter is an independent short story by itself because the characters won’t star in more than one although, at the end, you feel a cycle coming to an end with the whole history of every family member since that day in 1944.

This way of storytelling has been the most remarkable peculiarity of the book; I was hooked to these little portions of the family history through the eyes of different characters, like the pieces of a puzzle, wondering about this or that one, often recreating past events of one of the sisters through a thought or a conversation decades later into the chapter of another family member.

It could have been an average novel of the Nazi occupation, but the narration makes the story of this family unique, and those glimpses into this sister’s, the aunt’s or that child’s life go further into filling the atmosphere of the family and the time than a linear narration would.

Thanks to Harper books for the galley.

 

Heart Mountain, by Gretel Ehrlich

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Gretel Ehrlich

I received this book thanks to Netgalley.

In the 1940s, during World War II, Japanese-Americans were forced to move to interment camps around the US while their constitutional rights were suspended, by a government that was supposedly fighting against fascism in Asia and Europe.This is a story set in one of those camps, Heart Mountain in Wyoming, and the people who were confined in there, whose inner conflict was caused for the feeling betrayal by their own country, for which they would have fight for if allowed, since most of them were born as US citizens and view themselves as Americans.

On the other hand, there are also characters from the nearby town and farms; men who aren’t allow to join the army for their physical disabilities, women running their farms alone, not knowing if their husbands are still alive, etc., addressing the war from many different points of view.

I was really shocked by the internment camps for the Japanese Americans, which I had never heard or read of, so I began this novel with enthusiasm, expecting to immerse myself in a great piece of historical fiction but, despite how much I wanted to like the book, I couldn’t connect with the characters – there are too many of them, each chapter told from every one’s perspective, and sometimes the plots aren’t relevant to the story. I first thought the author wanted to tell a story about the interactions between the camp people and the locals, but there are many secondary plots about local characters on their own, with things happening out of the blue for no purpose whatsoever. In the end, the only parts I enjoyed were the descriptions of the seasonable work with the cattle in the mountains, riding for days in that beautiful scenery.

So, as you would have guessed, I can’t recommend the book. There are too many characters and I haven’t really connected with their stories, regardless of the appeal the internment camps as a theme represent.

Heart Mountain
Gretel Ehrlich
350 pages
Published by Open Road Media

 

 

Memoirs, tales and short stories: mini-reviews from October’16 Readathon

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Anna Gavalda, Marga Minco, Sjón

As I told you, I chose short books for the Readathon, and that was the best idea I ever had: I read five books during the event! And, this is remarkable, all of them were interesting and enjoyable reads. This was a surprise because I just browsed the library and borrowed books based entirely on their number of pages, without any further information about them but the synopsis on the back cover.

I read almost all of them in Spanish, but I have seen they have also been translated into English, so I am free to recommend them here on my blog  🙂

Bitter Herbs: The Vivid Memories of a Fugitive Jewish Girl in Nazi Occupied Holland (Marga Minco)

This is a memoir of the author, and I think it is considered a classic in some Northern European countries, like The diary of Anne Frank.

The story starts when the German soldiers enter Marga’s town and, when she asks her father if they are going to deport the Jews, like they were doing in Germany, he says that ‘Something like that could never happen here‘. Her family didn’t want to leave the country and none of them survived except Marga.

It is a terrible story, of course, but the author doesn’t put any sentimentalism on the text; she just gives us her memories as facts for us to cover the passages with the fear and pain Marga must have felt in her youth.

Book on Goodreads.

The blue fox (Sjón)

This is a short tale set in the middle of the Nineteenth Century in Iceland. I thought I was going to read a story of men against nature, but I was very wrong.

The story starts with a priest chasing a fox for its fur but, as they move towards the mountains through the snow, the narration is interrupted to tell us what has happened those days in the village. There has been a death, and thanks to the preparations for her funeral, we are going to know the story of a girl who was “different”.

This is that kind of book you don’t want to talk about so much, for the prospective readers to discover the story by themselves. It is thought-provoking, sad and beautiful.

Book on Goodreads.

I wish someone were waiting for me somewhere (Anna Gavalda)

This is a collection of short stories and, even though it is not a genre of my liking, I have to recommend it, because most of the stories are shocking, affecting the reader in one way or another.

What they have in common is the impact of one single event that, in less than a minute, changes everything. Apart from this, there are different genres, characters, situations, etc.

I specially liked three of them: a humorous story about two rich boys who take their father’s car without permission; one about a female veterinarian who has trouble making herself a place in a small village; and one about a salesman whose life has been destroyed by himself alone.

Book on Goodreads.

The storyteller, by Jodi Picoult

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Jodi Picoult

What a thought-provoking book! It’s about evil, goodness, and the fact that the two of them can converge into the same person.

Sage Singer is a solitary girl who works at night in a bakery, hidden from the world by her own choice because she thinks she is not worthy of love, friendship, or being happy. One day, she makes friends with Josef, a respected old man from the community where she lives and, shockingly, he confesses to her that he was an SS Nazi guard at Auschwitz and asks her to help him die.

Of course, Sage’s first reaction (after denial, that is, because such a confession seemed more likely to be a made up story by an old man) is disgust for all the crimes committed by Josef in the past, but then again, that was long time ago, and the man he is now is completely different: a nice teacher who has been helping others for years. Might the new Josef redeem the old one? Who is to judge?

Intertwined in this story, there is also Minka’s; she is Sage’s grandmother and a Holocaust survivor who has kept the horror she lived to herself, becoming a new person with a new life once she moved to America. But now Sage needs to know, and Minka finally releases her story, in which Josef plays also a part. Therefore, if the reader was feeling pity for a ninety-year-old man who took part in the world’s worst crimes but voluntarily decided to become a new person, now is willing to change her mind after knowing Minka’s story in Auschwitz.

As far as I know, Picoult’s books are always this controversial. The characters play the two points of view of the story, both of them explained in detail for the reader to sympathize and one has to decide for herself, which is not an easy task. And then again, we are not the ones to judge, but we can’t avoid judging either.

So, if you are looking for a book (or an author, for that matter) to challenge your values and morality, this is a great option. Besides, I never get tired of stories set in World War II, and this particular one is well written: raw and bitter when necessary, but well balanced with kindness and humour thanks to secondary characters in both storylines.

PS: This book was not on my list for the Read my own damn books Challenge, but I have other four books by this author waiting on my shelves 😉

The storyteller
Jodi Picoult
Atria Books, 460 pages
Book on Goodreads

Life after life, by Kate Atkinson

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Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd comes in a bar full of German soldiers, kills Hitler, and immediately the others shot her dead. Then she is born but dies at childbirth, so she is born again and makes it until she is a little girl… only to be born again, the same winter day, into the same family, overcoming previous accidents and difficulties that she experienced before.

This could seem a repetitive story, taking into account that Ursula lives many lives, but it’s far from it. In every life the author focuses our attention on a certain aspect of Ursula’s friends and relatives, on how much your life can change in just a second or the chances you have to make a different outcome… But that outcome, is it better or worse? How can we know?

The synopsis of the book asks What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? And that’s the question the book brings up – what is right? We all agree that right might be not dying from illnesses, accidents or violence, but once you are a healthy human being who lives in a safe environment, there are a number of things that bring you joy and happiness, and some necessarily imply that you can’t have the others.

Life after life is not only a thought-provoking book, but also a historical fiction story since most of it is set on World War II, during the London Blitz and, thanks to Ursula’s many lives, we get many different points of view of that period.

However, and this is funny, the end is open to interpretation, and I think the book is prone to, at least, one re-read, thanks to the clues that some of the characters leave throughout the story. I spent some time reading other readers’ questions and comments on GoodReads, because it really leaves you in need of answers. It’s a great story.

Life after life
Kate Atkinson
Black Swan
Paperback, 620 pages
Read my own damn books: 1st

At the water’s edge, by Sara Gruen

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Sara Gruen

How disappointing this book was!

The beginning sounded promising – a young American couple and a friend of them travelling together to Scotland in order to prove the very existence of the Loch Ness monster during World War II. These young wealthy people find themselves in the middle of a war that seems very real now that they have crossed the ocean, but their unsympathetic nature prevent them from understanding the whole picture about the situation the people of the village is living, except for our heroine, Maddie.

Maddie, who has always taken part in the fun with her husband and their friend, is now left behind in the hostel and there she would get to know the struggles of the war for the people from a social status different than hers. In addition, she will find out that she doesn’t really know her husband and his true intentions towards her and, of course, she is also to fall in love with someone else.

Alright, there are several themes in the book, all of which fit very well in a historical fiction novel, but somehow the author doesn’t manage to combine in a smooth fashion. I found it repetitive – they are in the inn having trouble with the staff, then the boys left for and expedition in the lake and Maddie learns about the people who surround her; the boys return and have trouble with the staff, then they left and Maddie learns more about the staff and her husband, and so on. There are also some, let’s say, supernatural scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the story and lead to an ending too easy to my liking.

So I would say I liked the main character and her transformation from being a snob to actually care about the others, but the story as a whole seemed pointless and confusing because the reader doesn’t really know what the author wanted to tell.

I think fans of Water for elephants will be disappointed as well…

At the water’s edge
Sarah Gruen
Published by Spiegel & Grau
348 pages