I've been on a reading jag for a couple of weeks now. Not sure what's going on so I'm just gonna go with it! Yesterday I finished another one.
What would you do to survive? Maybe a better question is what wouldn't you do?
Those two questions drive the novel I just finished – Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum.
Trudy Swenson is a middle aged history professor struggling to come to terms with her family history. During World War II her mother had been the lover of an unbelievably cruel SS officer. Trudy is suspicious that this man was her father, but because of a strained relationship with her mother, she is unsure. She is also confused about the role that ordinary German people played in the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The story is told through a series of flashbacks and brings to life a side of World War II that is rarely talked about. Were ordinary German people monsters, knowing that the death camps were in their backyards? Or were they naive, simply ignoring what was going on all around them? Or, as with most things, were they torn between black and white - good and evil - survival and death?
This book is rich with details and those save this novel from being one dimensional. While starving in Germany, Trudy's mother Anna could not get the smell of her Nazi officer's body out of her mind. She believed that he smelled something like smoked bacon and the smell revolted her and yet made her uncomfortably aware of her hunger. This detail is repeated several times. When it is finally mentioned the last time in the book the reader's suspicions are confirmed – it was the smell of the victims of the crematorium that he manned.
It's details like this that keep the reader involved in this novel. It's the story of what you might - or might not - do to survive.
Those two questions drive the novel I just finished – Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum.
Trudy Swenson is a middle aged history professor struggling to come to terms with her family history. During World War II her mother had been the lover of an unbelievably cruel SS officer. Trudy is suspicious that this man was her father, but because of a strained relationship with her mother, she is unsure. She is also confused about the role that ordinary German people played in the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The story is told through a series of flashbacks and brings to life a side of World War II that is rarely talked about. Were ordinary German people monsters, knowing that the death camps were in their backyards? Or were they naive, simply ignoring what was going on all around them? Or, as with most things, were they torn between black and white - good and evil - survival and death?
This book is rich with details and those save this novel from being one dimensional. While starving in Germany, Trudy's mother Anna could not get the smell of her Nazi officer's body out of her mind. She believed that he smelled something like smoked bacon and the smell revolted her and yet made her uncomfortably aware of her hunger. This detail is repeated several times. When it is finally mentioned the last time in the book the reader's suspicions are confirmed – it was the smell of the victims of the crematorium that he manned.
It's details like this that keep the reader involved in this novel. It's the story of what you might - or might not - do to survive.
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