Wren
Can history disappear if it’s written in blood?
This is such a hard book for me to review, mostly because it left me with way too many feelings and all of them hurt. I’ll be probably sitting with these feelings for a while.
I cannot say that I liked or enjoyed it, because that’s not how I’m inclined to feel about human misery, especially knowing it’s based heavily on real events and whatever the characters in the book go through, actual people have gone through that and worse. I did find it effective and important. The book truly shows the variety of costs regular civilians pay during wars, and it does it with a sense of detachment that makes everything all the more horrifying. You can really tell that it takes place in 1945, after so many years of destruction and desolation, and everyone is incredibly desensitized to it, because that’s how you stay alive. But also pain and empathy keep breaking through that ice now and again, because that’s how you stay human.
The characters all have very distinct voices, even though the author sometimes deliberately gives them similar word choices and metaphors to draw attention to their different truths. The premise and the bleak reality of the narrative sort of made me feel they were all doomed from the start. I was actually surprised there were survivors in the main cast. But being prepared for them to die didn’t make me any less attached to everyone, except for Albert who is consistently terrible. I did appreciate his chapters though, because his attempts to romanticize everyone in his inner monologues/unwritten letters to Hannelore underscored the terror of what was really happening, and his entire character is just such a sad portrayal of what propaganda and indoctrination does to a young person. Also, the path toward the reveal about Hannelore was breadcrumbed really well.
Anyway. This book hurts, war sucks, and humanity is a doomed species that is nevertheless capable of kindness and beauty.
I’ll be… sorting out all those feelings over there.
Can history disappear if it’s written in blood?
This is such a hard book for me to review, mostly because it left me with way too many feelings and all of them hurt. I’ll be probably sitting with these feelings for a while.
I cannot say that I liked or enjoyed it, because that’s not how I’m inclined to feel about human misery, especially knowing it’s based heavily on real events and whatever the characters in the book go through, actual people have gone through that and worse. I did find it effective and important. The book truly shows the variety of costs regular civilians pay during wars, and it does it with a sense of detachment that makes everything all the more horrifying. You can really tell that it takes place in 1945, after so many years of destruction and desolation, and everyone is incredibly desensitized to it, because that’s how you stay alive. But also pain and empathy keep breaking through that ice now and again, because that’s how you stay human.
The characters all have very distinct voices, even though the author sometimes deliberately gives them similar word choices and metaphors to draw attention to their different truths. The premise and the bleak reality of the narrative sort of made me feel they were all doomed from the start. I was actually surprised there were survivors in the main cast. But being prepared for them to die didn’t make me any less attached to everyone, except for Albert who is consistently terrible. I did appreciate his chapters though, because his attempts to romanticize everyone in his inner monologues/unwritten letters to Hannelore underscored the terror of what was really happening, and his entire character is just such a sad portrayal of what propaganda and indoctrination does to a young person. Also, the path toward the reveal about Hannelore was breadcrumbed really well.
Anyway. This book hurts, war sucks, and humanity is a doomed species that is nevertheless capable of kindness and beauty.
I’ll be… sorting out all those feelings over there.