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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
Review for Sunday Times: http://bit.ly/2p090ZH
– How can it be possible that we remain so curious to the end, so intent on knowing and experiencing even as we are dying? –
– Touch – it had grown so complicated and strange. The curl-pulling was a gesture I'd been familiar with all my life, or at least in the parts of my life where boys sat behind me in school, but this tease felt different. It carried a pleasant thrill, and I knew this was the closet I might ever come to an affectionate touch from a boy. But the fact that this could be my last thrill – it undid me. –
– I don't believe in talking to the dead – if you talk to the dead here, it's not long before you stop speaking your true language, whatever it may be. So I wrote him a note instead. –
– "No one's looking back." He laughed bitterly. "The whole world will never look back. And if they do, they'll probably say that it never really happened."
– People wrote where they were going, where they'd been, who they were looking for. They wrote who they had been but were careful not to write who they had become. –
– These trains we never should have trusted again, they appeared to be our only way home. –
– I was put in that cage because I loved too much. –
– How can it be possible that we remain so curious to the end, so intent on knowing and experiencing even as we are dying? –
– Touch – it had grown so complicated and strange. The curl-pulling was a gesture I'd been familiar with all my life, or at least in the parts of my life where boys sat behind me in school, but this tease felt different. It carried a pleasant thrill, and I knew this was the closet I might ever come to an affectionate touch from a boy. But the fact that this could be my last thrill – it undid me. –
– I don't believe in talking to the dead – if you talk to the dead here, it's not long before you stop speaking your true language, whatever it may be. So I wrote him a note instead. –
– "No one's looking back." He laughed bitterly. "The whole world will never look back. And if they do, they'll probably say that it never really happened."
– People wrote where they were going, where they'd been, who they were looking for. They wrote who they had been but were careful not to write who they had become. –
– These trains we never should have trusted again, they appeared to be our only way home. –
– I was put in that cage because I loved too much. –
A most beautifully written book about a truly awful topic, the "scientific experiments" performed by Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp during WW II. The story is told from the alternating points of view of twin preadolescent sisters -- and if you can't bear the thought of a tale so dreadful perhaps it will help to know that the ending is hopeful and as "happy" as those circumstances could allow. Konar's use of language is beautiful, the details less graphic than they might have been. A bit of post-reading research shows that this piece of fiction is based on historical fact. And please, may those facts never be repeated again in real life.
I'm torn about how I feel about this book. I enjoy WWII historical fiction and the subject matter, Josef Mengele's brutal experiments, was a new topic to me. It was just so sad and bleak with the smallest glimpses of hope. Just a tough read.
I wanted to like this but I just didn't. When I selected it, I misread the recommendation by Anthony Doerr as one from Anthony Marra and I think that led me astray. This wasn't for me.
Moving chronicle of a pair of twin girls who had the misfortune of catching the eye of Josef Mengele during the Holocaust. Konar is expert at plot and provides us with eccentric, interesting characters that find a variety ways of surviving Auschwitz.
Her weakness is the style and language she is using, a kind of heightened metaphorical stew that tips into magic realism. Now, considering the subject, it makes for young children to try to frame atrocities in a less realistic way so they can understand the darkest side of human nature. In practice, with Konar's ability, it falls short as she reaches too often for clunky metaphors or just bizarre turns of phrases. In the afterward of the copy I have, Konar states that the language was the entry point. Because someone like Garcia Marquez, magical realism is just the way he writes. It's instinctual. Konar has constructed it, and though it makes sense intellectually, it falls flat on the page more often than it should.
Still, her story is affecting and, in the end, moving and she has absolutely done her research. The Holocaust is always a hard thing to look back on and even harder to conceptualize artistically. Konar deserves points for trying and succeeding as much as she does.
Her weakness is the style and language she is using, a kind of heightened metaphorical stew that tips into magic realism. Now, considering the subject, it makes for young children to try to frame atrocities in a less realistic way so they can understand the darkest side of human nature. In practice, with Konar's ability, it falls short as she reaches too often for clunky metaphors or just bizarre turns of phrases. In the afterward of the copy I have, Konar states that the language was the entry point. Because someone like Garcia Marquez, magical realism is just the way he writes. It's instinctual. Konar has constructed it, and though it makes sense intellectually, it falls flat on the page more often than it should.
Still, her story is affecting and, in the end, moving and she has absolutely done her research. The Holocaust is always a hard thing to look back on and even harder to conceptualize artistically. Konar deserves points for trying and succeeding as much as she does.
I received an advance copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Beautiful, emotive, almost dreamlike writing makes the setting and events of 'Mischling' even more harrowing than they already are by their nature - herein is realised the impossible 'new way of approaching the Holocaust in literature'. It is this clever, lucid-but-detached narrative style, along with the wearied, turning innocence of the children who comprise most of the cast, which make 'Mischling' stand out and unsettle beyond the expected. It is surprisingly, intentionally readable, using this as a juxtaposition to its horrors which works devastatingly well. Konar has pinned her style of execution down to the last, and this meticulous attention to detail really pays off: 'Mischling' is many impressive accomplishments in one. Every aspect of it has been thoroughly thought out, with great care taken to pull it all off exactly - if anything has been less successfully realised, the whole would have suffered. Quite a feat of hard work, compassion, talent and artistry.
I ordered a hard copy of this book before I was even halfway in.
Beautiful, emotive, almost dreamlike writing makes the setting and events of 'Mischling' even more harrowing than they already are by their nature - herein is realised the impossible 'new way of approaching the Holocaust in literature'. It is this clever, lucid-but-detached narrative style, along with the wearied, turning innocence of the children who comprise most of the cast, which make 'Mischling' stand out and unsettle beyond the expected. It is surprisingly, intentionally readable, using this as a juxtaposition to its horrors which works devastatingly well. Konar has pinned her style of execution down to the last, and this meticulous attention to detail really pays off: 'Mischling' is many impressive accomplishments in one. Every aspect of it has been thoroughly thought out, with great care taken to pull it all off exactly - if anything has been less successfully realised, the whole would have suffered. Quite a feat of hard work, compassion, talent and artistry.
I ordered a hard copy of this book before I was even halfway in.
The writing in this book felt scattered at first and hard to follow. But the more I became invested in the story of these girls, it felt as though there would be no other way to tell this horrific story. I have read many books where the topic was of the holocaust, but this one took it a step further. Knowing that Mengele was a true part of this story and inflicted such pain on children in the name of research, made it hard at times to read on. If my memory is correct, this is the first book I have read which takes the reader beyond the camps and into the life after being liberated. My first thought when camps are liberated was "Thank God, they are finally free". After reading this book, I now know that, yes they no longer were imprisoned but they were never free and their struggles continued.
This was a heartbreaking book, as all Holocaust stories are - it's hard to read at times. It's also beautifully written and interwoven with moments of hope even within deep despair. The relationship between the twins - and the few friends they made in part two - was what made this book worth reading.
From reading others' reviews it seems some people found the characters "too naive" or "too mature" - but they are 12 and they are experiencing unspeakable horrors. To me, their naivety was a survival and coping tactic. I didn't see this as an inconsistency at all. They were children! In Auschwitz! They told themselves whatever they had to in order to survive, why is that not believable?
From reading others' reviews it seems some people found the characters "too naive" or "too mature" - but they are 12 and they are experiencing unspeakable horrors. To me, their naivety was a survival and coping tactic. I didn't see this as an inconsistency at all. They were children! In Auschwitz! They told themselves whatever they had to in order to survive, why is that not believable?
I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley...(Spoilers included) I wasn't really a huge fan of this book. I thought the story was unique - telling the different perspectives of two children who were part of Mengele's experiments during WW2 - and was something I had not read previously. That being said, I thought that the back and forth between the two perspectives of the sisters got a little too repetitive. I know that the author was trying to drive home how closely bonded the two were, but after a few chapters I felt as though I was rushing through those parts. After they left Mengele, the different circumstances of the sisters made the story more compelling for me, but I wish I had learned more. How did Pearl make it back? (That happened very abruptly.) We also find out what happens to some characters later in life...but what about the Twins? What about Feliks? We really only get small tidbits. I would have liked to have read what happened to them.
This Holocaust novel focuses on Jewish twin girls, Stasha and Pearl Zamorski, who arrive in Auschwitz and become inhabitants of Josef Mengele’s zoo, a special section of the concentration camp where he performed brutal experiments on those with genetic anomalies. The novel has two parts: the first deals with the time the girls spend in Auschwitz and the second focuses on what happens to them following the liberation of the camp. Of course, the focus throughout is on survival. With some exceptions, chapters are narrated alternately by the two.
Stasha and Pearl are 12 years old when they are sent to Auschwitz. They are defined by their oneness; they have a special psychic connection such that they know each other’s thoughts and “pain never belonged to just one of us.” They are fiercely devoted to each other and more than anything fear being separated. Stasha screams when different numbers are tattooed on their arms because “they pointed out that we were separate people, and when you are separate people, you can be parted.” Later she finds that one of the worst things about the experiments performed on her is that Mengele “imposed divisions on the matter I shared with Pearl.”
The book does not dwell too much on the specifics of the experiments. Most of the details of the experimentation are kept in the sidelines. What is described is horrific enough. The girls notice the others who have been at the camp for a while: “In nearly every pair, one twin had a spine gone awry, a bad leg, a patched eye, a wound, a scar, a crutch.” Not much more needs to be said. Those few who do survive Auschwitz become “an experiment for the war-torn countries, the disassembled, the displaced.”
It is not the physical torture but the emotional and mental suffering that most struck me. Pearl and Stasha suffer when they are separated from their family and each other; their physical pain is given much less emphasis. A Jewish doctor, Dr. Miri, suffers unimaginable emotional trauma. She is forced to be Mengele’s assistant, compelled “to do things she did not want to do.” Stasha speaks of Miri’s sorrow arising from “taking care of the children that Uncle [Mengele] claimed for his own. It must have been like stringing a harp for someone who played his harp with a knife, or binding a book for someone whose idea of reading was feeding pages to a fire.” In the end, Miri is “folded in a corner . . . She was awake, but absent.”
I feel guilty for having to admit that I found the book tedious. Reading about their efforts to survive in such horrific circumstances was painful and I certainly hoped for their survival, but otherwise I felt emotionally distanced. Perhaps the lyrical prose caused some of this disconnect. The beautiful figurative language just does not seem appropriate to the subject matter and does not suit the age of the narrators. The number of metaphors is sometimes overwhelming; at the beginning, Stasha describes their lives in utero: “For eight months we were afloat in amniotic snowfall, two rosy mittens resting on the lining of our mother. I couldn’t imagine anything grander than the womb we shared, but after the scaffolds of our brains were ivoried and our spleens were complete, Pearl wanted to see the world beyond us.” The girls’ thoughts and dialogue suggest they should be much older; for example, Pearl says she will never look away from the horrors “because in looking away . . . we would lose ourselves so thoroughly that our loss would require another name.”
There are coincidences that jar. Pearl ends up in the same bed near the wall of which Stasha had scratched the words “Dear Pearl”. The second part of the novel feels disjointed and the ending is just too simplistic. The resolution is dependent on more coincidence, and the use of a zoo at the beginning and end is just too neat a structure.
There are certainly messages for the reader, one of the most important being that we not forget; one character makes a comment that really struck me: “’The whole world will never look back. And if they do, they’ll probably say that it never really happened.’” The dehumanizing effects of the holocaust are emphasized; Stasha speaks of the Zoo’s most severe alteration being “the very damage it did to our notions of what it meant to be close to another living being” and she tries to tell her sister that “we had to treat ourselves as objects in order to get by.” Knowing the degree of evil that exists in the world, an evil “in all its lowdown fullness, its beastly disrespect for all living creatures and their great variety,” is it possible to “learn to love the world once more”?
I’m not sure whether to recommend this book to others. Its subject matter is difficult and what happens to the characters is heart wrenching. Those who enjoy lyrical writing will find much to like, but those looking for an action-filled plot will not.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
Stasha and Pearl are 12 years old when they are sent to Auschwitz. They are defined by their oneness; they have a special psychic connection such that they know each other’s thoughts and “pain never belonged to just one of us.” They are fiercely devoted to each other and more than anything fear being separated. Stasha screams when different numbers are tattooed on their arms because “they pointed out that we were separate people, and when you are separate people, you can be parted.” Later she finds that one of the worst things about the experiments performed on her is that Mengele “imposed divisions on the matter I shared with Pearl.”
The book does not dwell too much on the specifics of the experiments. Most of the details of the experimentation are kept in the sidelines. What is described is horrific enough. The girls notice the others who have been at the camp for a while: “In nearly every pair, one twin had a spine gone awry, a bad leg, a patched eye, a wound, a scar, a crutch.” Not much more needs to be said. Those few who do survive Auschwitz become “an experiment for the war-torn countries, the disassembled, the displaced.”
It is not the physical torture but the emotional and mental suffering that most struck me. Pearl and Stasha suffer when they are separated from their family and each other; their physical pain is given much less emphasis. A Jewish doctor, Dr. Miri, suffers unimaginable emotional trauma. She is forced to be Mengele’s assistant, compelled “to do things she did not want to do.” Stasha speaks of Miri’s sorrow arising from “taking care of the children that Uncle [Mengele] claimed for his own. It must have been like stringing a harp for someone who played his harp with a knife, or binding a book for someone whose idea of reading was feeding pages to a fire.” In the end, Miri is “folded in a corner . . . She was awake, but absent.”
I feel guilty for having to admit that I found the book tedious. Reading about their efforts to survive in such horrific circumstances was painful and I certainly hoped for their survival, but otherwise I felt emotionally distanced. Perhaps the lyrical prose caused some of this disconnect. The beautiful figurative language just does not seem appropriate to the subject matter and does not suit the age of the narrators. The number of metaphors is sometimes overwhelming; at the beginning, Stasha describes their lives in utero: “For eight months we were afloat in amniotic snowfall, two rosy mittens resting on the lining of our mother. I couldn’t imagine anything grander than the womb we shared, but after the scaffolds of our brains were ivoried and our spleens were complete, Pearl wanted to see the world beyond us.” The girls’ thoughts and dialogue suggest they should be much older; for example, Pearl says she will never look away from the horrors “because in looking away . . . we would lose ourselves so thoroughly that our loss would require another name.”
There are coincidences that jar. Pearl ends up in the same bed near the wall of which Stasha had scratched the words “Dear Pearl”. The second part of the novel feels disjointed and the ending is just too simplistic. The resolution is dependent on more coincidence, and the use of a zoo at the beginning and end is just too neat a structure.
There are certainly messages for the reader, one of the most important being that we not forget; one character makes a comment that really struck me: “’The whole world will never look back. And if they do, they’ll probably say that it never really happened.’” The dehumanizing effects of the holocaust are emphasized; Stasha speaks of the Zoo’s most severe alteration being “the very damage it did to our notions of what it meant to be close to another living being” and she tries to tell her sister that “we had to treat ourselves as objects in order to get by.” Knowing the degree of evil that exists in the world, an evil “in all its lowdown fullness, its beastly disrespect for all living creatures and their great variety,” is it possible to “learn to love the world once more”?
I’m not sure whether to recommend this book to others. Its subject matter is difficult and what happens to the characters is heart wrenching. Those who enjoy lyrical writing will find much to like, but those looking for an action-filled plot will not.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).