Eduardo Santiago
Jackbooted thugs rounding up civilians. Murdering some. Deportations. Concentration camps. It was hard at times to tell if this was 1940s Germany or 2026 America. Or Palestine.
The book is told in two parts. The first and principal is Hannelore's voice, from her childhood in the 1930s onward. The second is Carolyn, Hannelore's adult daughter, speaking candidly about her writing process and about her mother.
I want to give this to everyone I know. It's short. It's powerful. It's frighteningly relevant. And it even has mouthwatering cookie recipes.
It's hard to justify five stars. The writing is fourth-grade level, presumably because it's DuClos's transcription/condensation of her mother's verbal recollections across many years. (DuClos's own voice, near the end of the book, is a refreshing return to adulthood.) I justify my rating based on impact. I'm shaken, and feel even more strongly now that we must act.
Favorite sentence, from the epilog: "Krause [concentration camp director] met his fate in much the same way as he had treated his thousands of prisoners: brutally. He was captured, torn apart, quartered, and torn into pieces by Russian partisans." Let's hope we get to see (and participate in) a lot of that soon.
Jackbooted thugs rounding up civilians. Murdering some. Deportations. Concentration camps. It was hard at times to tell if this was 1940s Germany or 2026 America. Or Palestine.
The book is told in two parts. The first and principal is Hannelore's voice, from her childhood in the 1930s onward. The second is Carolyn, Hannelore's adult daughter, speaking candidly about her writing process and about her mother.
I want to give this to everyone I know. It's short. It's powerful. It's frighteningly relevant. And it even has mouthwatering cookie recipes.
It's hard to justify five stars. The writing is fourth-grade level, presumably because it's DuClos's transcription/condensation of her mother's verbal recollections across many years. (DuClos's own voice, near the end of the book, is a refreshing return to adulthood.) I justify my rating based on impact. I'm shaken, and feel even more strongly now that we must act.
Favorite sentence, from the epilog: "Krause [concentration camp director] met his fate in much the same way as he had treated his thousands of prisoners: brutally. He was captured, torn apart, quartered, and torn into pieces by Russian partisans." Let's hope we get to see (and participate in) a lot of that soon.