Mischling
2016 • 353 pages
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood. As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain. That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears. Stasha grieves for her twin, but clings to the possibility that Pearl remains alive. When the camp is liberated by the Red Army, she and her companion Feliks--a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin--travel through Poland's devastation. Undeterred by injury, starvation, or the chaos around them, motivated by equal parts danger and hope, they encounter hostile villagers, Jewish resistance fighters, and fellow refugees, their quest enabled by the notion that Mengele may be captured and brought to justice within the ruins of the Warsaw Zoo. As the young survivors discover what has become of the world, they must try to imagine a future within it.
Reviews with the most likes.
So riveting that I started and finished it today – couldn't stop.
Some parts I really liked. But overall I thought it was weird and hard to follow. About half way through I almost quit and gave up on it. I understand it's supposed to be sort of fairy tale -esque but it did not work for me. Some of the author's choices were just too nonsensical.
Why does Pearl disappear? Stasha and Pearl are literally standing next to each other but then Pearl is just gone, it was such a weird choice when there are any number of ways the girls could be separated if that is what the author wants.
Why does Stasha follow bloody tracks into a salt mine to the hands of the Nazis- this was so idiotic as to be bizarre. She wakes up to her stolen horse missing, the horse is apparently bleeding for some unexplained reason so she follows the blood. But instead of the author having her stumble upon a camp, she has the characters descend into a mine where they clearly have the opportunity to see the Nazis and run away at any time, instead they just stand there and get stripped and shot at.
And then near the end Stasha, a twelve year old traumatized girl, gives an impromptu cesarean section to a woman she finds in an abandoned house. What. Why. And well the woman dies but miraculously the baby survives. I know this is supposed to reference Mengele's insane surgeries and tortures, maybe even have Stasha learn something good from what she witnessed, but having her be able to perform a successful cesarean after glimpsing her torturer perform the same operation is just insane.
And how does Pearl get back to Poland, and why does she come? One minute she is being carted off to Palestine and then her cart driver is shot and the scene fades to black.
This is a beautifully written and harrowing story of twin experiments during WWII. These events and characters will be etched in my mind and heart for a long time. Highly recommend.
