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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
What a wonderfully written story of whimsy, circus life, wartime, and love. The main character, Leena, is so headstrong and determined. I love the historical fiction aspect, even when some parts were a bit
This is a Holocaust denial book.
I picked this up because it was recommended by Book of the Month as an enchanting circus tale a la The Night Circus, but with excellent Jewish and disabled representation. It fails miserably at building a magical but convincing circus, and its “representation” quickly turns into exploitation and culminates in Holocaust denial.
Let’s look at all three points.
1) The circus. This is supposed to be the most fantastic circus the world has ever seen, we are told. Constantly. And that’s the issue with the writing in this book. It feels like a 10-year-old’s first attempt at writing a book. Nothing is ever shown here, only told. We are spoon-fed, in the first few pages, the background of the circus owner (Harry). He’s a wealthy Christian man who decided to start a circus because his dad was mean (no more depth is given to their relationship – you are told that he was a big meanie but never shown anything that happened, you are told that his grandmother was a nice rich lady who gave an advance on his inheritance so he could have the circus, but you never get to see interactions between any of these characters). We rarely see any of the circus performances, and when we do, the writing does not enchant. It confuses. Most of what we do see is actual magic from the illusionist, which is never explained, and this was not marketed as a fantasy book. The main character remarks that the illusions are boring to her because they are explained by simple tricks. This is far from the magical circus of The Night Circus, where the author crafted a perfect atmosphere with lyrical writing. You read The Night Circus and you wish that the astonishing performances and sets were real. You read The Circus Train and forget that it’s supposed to be the best show in Europe until the author decides to remember to tell you.
The main character is 9 at the beginning, but I don’t think this why the writing was so oversimplified. It doesn’t read as “YA or adult book written partially from the perspective of a child” it reads as “child who tried writing a book for the first time.” It doesn’t even read as middle-grade, which can have sophisticated writing and well-handled deep themes.
2) The disability representation. The protagonist at the beginning and end of the story is Lena, the disabled daughter of the circus’s top illusionist (Theo). Lena is insecure about being disabled because Theo teaches her to be and then is shocked that she is ashamed. She uses a wheelchair because she contracted polio as a child and was paralyzed (from the waist down?) as a result. The train she lives on somehow poses no accessibility issues, except when it was convenient in the first couple pages to let us know that Lena was in a wheelchair, because the owner was kind enough to fix all those issues while she was an infant. She has no trouble going from car to car on this train because … there’s rubber on the parts that connect cars together? Wheelchairs would have more issues with moving between cars on a 1930s train than just whether they are wheeling over metal or rubber. Has the author seen a train before? Let alone a 1930s one?
Lena is not visibly disabled, and it’s so important that readers know this, that the author mentions it all the time. Lena pretends not to be disabled for several days, because nothing seems wrong with her legs visibly – she just can’t walk. Not using her leg muscles once in her life apparently had no effect on her physical development. It turns out, on page ___ out of 376, that Lena has never tried walking before! She might be able to walk and just not know it, because she never thought to try! After this convenient realization, she tries to walk, and presto! her infantile paralysis is miraculously cured. Disabled people know this storyline – it’s what people who hate disabled folk constantly shout, that disabled people simply wouldn’t be disabled if they weren’t too lazy to try.
In that opening scene, the one where her wheelchair is a problem and then isn’t for the rest of the book? Lena is perfectly happy with her friends, then is told by Theo that they aren’t really her friends because they see Lena and her wheelchair as a burden. Great parenting, I guess? Lena thinks of nothing but how everybody judges her after this moment. She hides her disability from the Jewish boy who snuck onto the train. She figures that, since he hasn’t seen her in her wheelchair, she can keep him from knowing she’s disabled so that he’ll want to be friends. And then, when Lena seems to make a genuine friends with this boy, and he doesn’t appear to care she’s disabled, Theo decides that he needs to pay the kid to continue being her friend. Everything about this “representation” is negative towards disabled people and patently absurd.
The author did no research. Please see a section later in this review called actual history of the circus for more detail, but as far as disability representation goes: circuses were pretty much one of the only places where disabled people could gain work and even become stars. They were havens of disability culture. Writing that Lena sticks out so much because of her wheelchair (without it, nobody can tell she’s disabled because she was somehow paralyzed by polio but not disfigured in any way) is absurd. In real circuses, there would have been dozens of people in Lena’s daily life who were not just very visibly disabled, but also valued more because of their disabilities.
3) The representation of Jewish characters and the Holocaust. This book is horrific when it comes to disability, but even more egregious is that it completely distorts history while maintaining “thorough historical research” as its main marketing point. The beginnings of its denial are seen as soon as the circus performers become aware of the Jewish stowaway. In this scene, Lena checks his passport, sees that the boy is German and has stamps from all over the world. The next character who looks at the passport notices a big J stamped on the pages, which Lena somehow missed. One character goes, “The pogrom!” upon seeing it. AND THEN THE AUTHOR WRITES THAT LENA IS UPSET SHE DIDN’T GET TO SEE KRISTALLNACHT BECAUSE ALL THE BROKEN GLASS MUST HAVE BEEN SOOOO BEAUTIFUL. One of the few instances of description in the book is of HOW PRETTY all the different colors of glass must have been. She writes that it must have looked magical, like gems falling from the sky!
A reminder, to anyone who somehow doesn’t know: Kristallnacht is a night where mobs took the streets and ransacked Jewish homes, synagogues, businesses, hospitals, etc. Any building that was owned by Jews was attacked. Synagogues were burned to the ground, Jewish people were physically attacked (at least 91 were murdered), some people were kidnapped, and their houses, businesses, and synagogues were looted. Afterwards, the Nazis made the Jewish communities pay for the damages that the antisemitic mob caused. Nothing about this could ever and should never be construed as “beautiful.” The protagonist being antisemitic but “innocently” unaware of antisemitism is not an excuse for the author’s antisemitism. The author acts as though this girl’s ignorance means she isn’t antisemitic.
The nonsense does not end there. Immediately after this, as they are debating whether the boy should be allowed to join the circus or be forced to stay in Nazi territory, the protagonist’s father argues that this boy is “as Aryan as they come” because he has blond hair and blue eyes. This is a gross mischaracterization of the Nazi eugenic ideology, but more than that, the author writes his story as though it’s ridiculous and tragic for Nazis to hate him because he is blond-haired and blue-eyed, not because it’s horrific to systematically murder a group of people. She immediately explains that these “Aryan” traits are because his father is Jewish. The author herself thinks that Jews cannot have this coloring unless they are descended from non-Jewish people.
Right after this, our antisemitic-but-unaware-that-she-is protagonist lets us know that she doesn’t understand why anyone would be antisemitic. She doesn’t even understand, really, what that means. Neither does the author. She has her “Aryan” Jewish character say that he doesn’t understand it, either, that it must be some disease people are born with. None of the characters understand antisemitism because the non-Jewish author exploiting the Holocaust for her book did not bother to understand it herself.
In this exchange, the owner of the circus is angered at the thought of even including a Jew in his circus. This is absurd if you know anything at all about circus history. This makes it all the more glaring that Lena is surprised to hear that people hate Jews. This would be the only circus in Europe with no Jewish people anywhere in its cast or crew. That would be pretty significant, something characters would notice just as much as they would notice their circus strangely only having abled performers. You can bet that if a circus like this existed, the ownership would openly talk about their hatred for these categories of people and the strides they’ve clearly taken to exclude them, an exclusion setting them apart from every other circus troupe. Again, see my actual history of the circus section for more on this.
We learn also in this introduction to the Jewish character that he is there because he was on a job to steal from the circus train, not because he was hiding from the Gestapo as the other characters assumed, and he is already planning a larger robbery. This paints Jews as liars and thieves who were not really concerned about the antisemitic uprising.
The plot goes on to become a Holocaust-denial propaganda story that really, really wants readers to believe they are reading thoughtful representation.
So, the circus owner who somehow never before voiced his intense hatred decides to break his contract and let the SS know that there is a Jewish boy hiding on his train. He points to Lena’s father as the culprit who snuck him into the cast. Both are taken to Theresienstadt Ghetto, which in reality was a sort of waystation where Jews were processed and then sent to different concentration camps, and as such, its conditions were engineered to cause death. Its second role was to serve as a propaganda camp, something to show to the outside world to make it seem as though Jews were not being treated all that badly. This could have been a great way to explore the manufacture of Holocaust denial that started during the Holocaust itself, the juxtaposition between the camp’s two functions being an illustration of the difference between the reality of the Holocaust and the way it is portrayed in denial literature. Instead, this book ignores the death function of the camp, leaning into the idea that Jews at Theresienstadt really were well-treated. In effect, this means that this book becomes an extension of Theresienstadt’s propaganda. The characters are treated well, the author says, become they are circus performers and therefore useful. They are never threatened in any way. Their fears over possibly being killed are easily written off by the author – it turns out the mean SS officer really just wants them to perform! This plotline argues that this ghetto, and the Holocaust by extension, was no worse than your average 1930s circus. It is important to recognize this, because based on the glowing reviews from readers (here on goodreads and in major media outlets), it is flying past the radars of many. The deliberate distortion of history for a political end is called propaganda. It’s hard to resist propaganda that you don’t even know you’re reading. Folks are reading this and unknowingly internalizing harmful ideas about disabled people, about Jews, and about the Holocaust. According to recent research, 1 in 4 Europeans have antisemitic beliefs, antisemitic incidents have reached an all-time high in the US, and most young Americans do not know basic facts about the Holocaust. Books like this one are part of the problem, especially when they’re how the Holocaust is taught in too many schools.
Any of the above should be enough to convince a reasonable reader to skip this book. But the book’s issues do not stop there. Here is a list of garbage that happens in the rest of the plot:
• Alexandre gains a love interest at Theresienstadt. However, the author kills her off just before they escape the ghetto just so Alexandre has no obstacles to continuing his romance with the non-Jewish Lena. It’s very important to the author to kill off the only Jewish girl in the book and that Alexandre doesn’t end up with a Jew.
• The SS officer has a redemption arc.
• The circus owner, who is so antisemitic that he has the only circus in Europe with no Jews, who turned a Jewish boy in to the Nazis, gets a redemption arc.
Actual history of the circus: The circus was a nexus of disabled culture, a home for marginalized people of all kinds, but especially for disabled people, Jews, and Romani (a third main target of the Nazis, who are absent in this book). This was well-known to anyone who was familiar with circuses in the twentieth century, and especially to people running the circus. Jews had been a part of circuses since their early origins in ancient Rome – after the defeat of the kingdom of Israel, in an uprising against Roman imperialism, most of the Jewish population was sold into slavery. Some of those slaves became gladiators. Many circuses were, in fact, owned by Jews. Including major ones. Seven are still operated today and still run by the Jewish families that founded them.
Circuses WERE very important to Jewish people during the Holocaust. Circuses worked to hide the Jewish performers and other circus family members. In fact, these Jewish performers would sometimes perform for Nazis, while the Nazis were none the wiser.
Some Jewish performers were found and captured by the Nazis. The most famous of these is the Ovitz Family, a group of musical performers who all had dwarfism. Although they were not technically circus performers, they were a famous traveling show that would have been known throughout Europe (including by the characters in this book, especially as Harry was obsessed in making the best show). They were Sephardic Jews from Hungary who became the largest family to survive Auschwitz with none of them dying. They were prevented from dying because Josef Mengele wanted to conduct experiments on them, and they were known as performers in the camp. They saved Jewish people they weren’t related to by falsely identifying them as relatives (Mengele was interested in them as family with dwarfs and people of average height). Their status as celebrity performers did not, as this book would argue, mean that they were well-treated. Mengele did horrific things to his test subjects even if he did not let them starve.
Before the Holocaust, the Ovitz’s were famous in large part because they were disabled. They were amazing performers, yes, but their wider appeal and success came because audiences were so enraptured by seeing an entire family of dwarfs who happened to be great musicians. Their dwarfism was an asset to them, as it would have been in the circus ring. Circuses sought out disabled performers because audiences enjoyed them more. This appeal was not limited to freak shows, which by the 1930s were often dark corners of the circus because they were seen as disturbing, exploitative, dehumanizing, even to audiences “way back then.” Disabled performers in the main show were a draw, an attraction that audiences would not feel guilty about. People pretended to be disabled to get jobs in the circus.
What you should read instead:
-Giant: The Dwarfs of Auschwitz, a superb non-fiction book that details the Ovitz family’s lives leading up to and during the Holocaust.
-Thistlefott by GennaRose Nethercott. It tells the story of two Jewish siblings who grew up in a famous puppeteer family. As adults, they inherit Baba Yaga’s house, inspiring them to take up the family business together, while being chased down by a dark force that led to the death of their ancestors. This book is a beautiful representation of the struggle confronting darkness in Jewish family history. It’s an experience personal to GennaRose Nethercott, whose mother’s family survived a pogrom in Ukraine.
I picked this up because it was recommended by Book of the Month as an enchanting circus tale a la The Night Circus, but with excellent Jewish and disabled representation. It fails miserably at building a magical but convincing circus, and its “representation” quickly turns into exploitation and culminates in Holocaust denial.
Let’s look at all three points.
1) The circus. This is supposed to be the most fantastic circus the world has ever seen, we are told. Constantly. And that’s the issue with the writing in this book. It feels like a 10-year-old’s first attempt at writing a book. Nothing is ever shown here, only told. We are spoon-fed, in the first few pages, the background of the circus owner (Harry). He’s a wealthy Christian man who decided to start a circus because his dad was mean (no more depth is given to their relationship – you are told that he was a big meanie but never shown anything that happened, you are told that his grandmother was a nice rich lady who gave an advance on his inheritance so he could have the circus, but you never get to see interactions between any of these characters). We rarely see any of the circus performances, and when we do, the writing does not enchant. It confuses. Most of what we do see is actual magic from the illusionist, which is never explained, and this was not marketed as a fantasy book. The main character remarks that the illusions are boring to her because they are explained by simple tricks. This is far from the magical circus of The Night Circus, where the author crafted a perfect atmosphere with lyrical writing. You read The Night Circus and you wish that the astonishing performances and sets were real. You read The Circus Train and forget that it’s supposed to be the best show in Europe until the author decides to remember to tell you.
The main character is 9 at the beginning, but I don’t think this why the writing was so oversimplified. It doesn’t read as “YA or adult book written partially from the perspective of a child” it reads as “child who tried writing a book for the first time.” It doesn’t even read as middle-grade, which can have sophisticated writing and well-handled deep themes.
2) The disability representation. The protagonist at the beginning and end of the story is Lena, the disabled daughter of the circus’s top illusionist (Theo). Lena is insecure about being disabled because Theo teaches her to be and then is shocked that she is ashamed. She uses a wheelchair because she contracted polio as a child and was paralyzed (from the waist down?) as a result. The train she lives on somehow poses no accessibility issues, except when it was convenient in the first couple pages to let us know that Lena was in a wheelchair, because the owner was kind enough to fix all those issues while she was an infant. She has no trouble going from car to car on this train because … there’s rubber on the parts that connect cars together? Wheelchairs would have more issues with moving between cars on a 1930s train than just whether they are wheeling over metal or rubber. Has the author seen a train before? Let alone a 1930s one?
Lena is not visibly disabled, and it’s so important that readers know this, that the author mentions it all the time. Lena pretends not to be disabled for several days, because nothing seems wrong with her legs visibly – she just can’t walk. Not using her leg muscles once in her life apparently had no effect on her physical development. It turns out, on page ___ out of 376, that Lena has never tried walking before! She might be able to walk and just not know it, because she never thought to try! After this convenient realization, she tries to walk, and presto! her infantile paralysis is miraculously cured. Disabled people know this storyline – it’s what people who hate disabled folk constantly shout, that disabled people simply wouldn’t be disabled if they weren’t too lazy to try.
In that opening scene, the one where her wheelchair is a problem and then isn’t for the rest of the book? Lena is perfectly happy with her friends, then is told by Theo that they aren’t really her friends because they see Lena and her wheelchair as a burden. Great parenting, I guess? Lena thinks of nothing but how everybody judges her after this moment. She hides her disability from the Jewish boy who snuck onto the train. She figures that, since he hasn’t seen her in her wheelchair, she can keep him from knowing she’s disabled so that he’ll want to be friends. And then, when Lena seems to make a genuine friends with this boy, and he doesn’t appear to care she’s disabled, Theo decides that he needs to pay the kid to continue being her friend. Everything about this “representation” is negative towards disabled people and patently absurd.
The author did no research. Please see a section later in this review called actual history of the circus for more detail, but as far as disability representation goes: circuses were pretty much one of the only places where disabled people could gain work and even become stars. They were havens of disability culture. Writing that Lena sticks out so much because of her wheelchair (without it, nobody can tell she’s disabled because she was somehow paralyzed by polio but not disfigured in any way) is absurd. In real circuses, there would have been dozens of people in Lena’s daily life who were not just very visibly disabled, but also valued more because of their disabilities.
3) The representation of Jewish characters and the Holocaust. This book is horrific when it comes to disability, but even more egregious is that it completely distorts history while maintaining “thorough historical research” as its main marketing point. The beginnings of its denial are seen as soon as the circus performers become aware of the Jewish stowaway. In this scene, Lena checks his passport, sees that the boy is German and has stamps from all over the world. The next character who looks at the passport notices a big J stamped on the pages, which Lena somehow missed. One character goes, “The pogrom!” upon seeing it. AND THEN THE AUTHOR WRITES THAT LENA IS UPSET SHE DIDN’T GET TO SEE KRISTALLNACHT BECAUSE ALL THE BROKEN GLASS MUST HAVE BEEN SOOOO BEAUTIFUL. One of the few instances of description in the book is of HOW PRETTY all the different colors of glass must have been. She writes that it must have looked magical, like gems falling from the sky!
A reminder, to anyone who somehow doesn’t know: Kristallnacht is a night where mobs took the streets and ransacked Jewish homes, synagogues, businesses, hospitals, etc. Any building that was owned by Jews was attacked. Synagogues were burned to the ground, Jewish people were physically attacked (at least 91 were murdered), some people were kidnapped, and their houses, businesses, and synagogues were looted. Afterwards, the Nazis made the Jewish communities pay for the damages that the antisemitic mob caused. Nothing about this could ever and should never be construed as “beautiful.” The protagonist being antisemitic but “innocently” unaware of antisemitism is not an excuse for the author’s antisemitism. The author acts as though this girl’s ignorance means she isn’t antisemitic.
The nonsense does not end there. Immediately after this, as they are debating whether the boy should be allowed to join the circus or be forced to stay in Nazi territory, the protagonist’s father argues that this boy is “as Aryan as they come” because he has blond hair and blue eyes. This is a gross mischaracterization of the Nazi eugenic ideology, but more than that, the author writes his story as though it’s ridiculous and tragic for Nazis to hate him because he is blond-haired and blue-eyed, not because it’s horrific to systematically murder a group of people. She immediately explains that these “Aryan” traits are because his father is Jewish. The author herself thinks that Jews cannot have this coloring unless they are descended from non-Jewish people.
Right after this, our antisemitic-but-unaware-that-she-is protagonist lets us know that she doesn’t understand why anyone would be antisemitic. She doesn’t even understand, really, what that means. Neither does the author. She has her “Aryan” Jewish character say that he doesn’t understand it, either, that it must be some disease people are born with. None of the characters understand antisemitism because the non-Jewish author exploiting the Holocaust for her book did not bother to understand it herself.
In this exchange, the owner of the circus is angered at the thought of even including a Jew in his circus. This is absurd if you know anything at all about circus history. This makes it all the more glaring that Lena is surprised to hear that people hate Jews. This would be the only circus in Europe with no Jewish people anywhere in its cast or crew. That would be pretty significant, something characters would notice just as much as they would notice their circus strangely only having abled performers. You can bet that if a circus like this existed, the ownership would openly talk about their hatred for these categories of people and the strides they’ve clearly taken to exclude them, an exclusion setting them apart from every other circus troupe. Again, see my actual history of the circus section for more on this.
We learn also in this introduction to the Jewish character that he is there because he was on a job to steal from the circus train, not because he was hiding from the Gestapo as the other characters assumed, and he is already planning a larger robbery. This paints Jews as liars and thieves who were not really concerned about the antisemitic uprising.
The plot goes on to become a Holocaust-denial propaganda story that really, really wants readers to believe they are reading thoughtful representation.
So, the circus owner who somehow never before voiced his intense hatred decides to break his contract and let the SS know that there is a Jewish boy hiding on his train. He points to Lena’s father as the culprit who snuck him into the cast. Both are taken to Theresienstadt Ghetto, which in reality was a sort of waystation where Jews were processed and then sent to different concentration camps, and as such, its conditions were engineered to cause death. Its second role was to serve as a propaganda camp, something to show to the outside world to make it seem as though Jews were not being treated all that badly. This could have been a great way to explore the manufacture of Holocaust denial that started during the Holocaust itself, the juxtaposition between the camp’s two functions being an illustration of the difference between the reality of the Holocaust and the way it is portrayed in denial literature. Instead, this book ignores the death function of the camp, leaning into the idea that Jews at Theresienstadt really were well-treated. In effect, this means that this book becomes an extension of Theresienstadt’s propaganda. The characters are treated well, the author says, become they are circus performers and therefore useful. They are never threatened in any way. Their fears over possibly being killed are easily written off by the author – it turns out the mean SS officer really just wants them to perform! This plotline argues that this ghetto, and the Holocaust by extension, was no worse than your average 1930s circus. It is important to recognize this, because based on the glowing reviews from readers (here on goodreads and in major media outlets), it is flying past the radars of many. The deliberate distortion of history for a political end is called propaganda. It’s hard to resist propaganda that you don’t even know you’re reading. Folks are reading this and unknowingly internalizing harmful ideas about disabled people, about Jews, and about the Holocaust. According to recent research, 1 in 4 Europeans have antisemitic beliefs, antisemitic incidents have reached an all-time high in the US, and most young Americans do not know basic facts about the Holocaust. Books like this one are part of the problem, especially when they’re how the Holocaust is taught in too many schools.
Any of the above should be enough to convince a reasonable reader to skip this book. But the book’s issues do not stop there. Here is a list of garbage that happens in the rest of the plot:
• Alexandre gains a love interest at Theresienstadt. However, the author kills her off just before they escape the ghetto just so Alexandre has no obstacles to continuing his romance with the non-Jewish Lena. It’s very important to the author to kill off the only Jewish girl in the book and that Alexandre doesn’t end up with a Jew.
• The SS officer has a redemption arc.
• The circus owner, who is so antisemitic that he has the only circus in Europe with no Jews, who turned a Jewish boy in to the Nazis, gets a redemption arc.
Actual history of the circus: The circus was a nexus of disabled culture, a home for marginalized people of all kinds, but especially for disabled people, Jews, and Romani (a third main target of the Nazis, who are absent in this book). This was well-known to anyone who was familiar with circuses in the twentieth century, and especially to people running the circus. Jews had been a part of circuses since their early origins in ancient Rome – after the defeat of the kingdom of Israel, in an uprising against Roman imperialism, most of the Jewish population was sold into slavery. Some of those slaves became gladiators. Many circuses were, in fact, owned by Jews. Including major ones. Seven are still operated today and still run by the Jewish families that founded them.
Circuses WERE very important to Jewish people during the Holocaust. Circuses worked to hide the Jewish performers and other circus family members. In fact, these Jewish performers would sometimes perform for Nazis, while the Nazis were none the wiser.
Some Jewish performers were found and captured by the Nazis. The most famous of these is the Ovitz Family, a group of musical performers who all had dwarfism. Although they were not technically circus performers, they were a famous traveling show that would have been known throughout Europe (including by the characters in this book, especially as Harry was obsessed in making the best show). They were Sephardic Jews from Hungary who became the largest family to survive Auschwitz with none of them dying. They were prevented from dying because Josef Mengele wanted to conduct experiments on them, and they were known as performers in the camp. They saved Jewish people they weren’t related to by falsely identifying them as relatives (Mengele was interested in them as family with dwarfs and people of average height). Their status as celebrity performers did not, as this book would argue, mean that they were well-treated. Mengele did horrific things to his test subjects even if he did not let them starve.
Before the Holocaust, the Ovitz’s were famous in large part because they were disabled. They were amazing performers, yes, but their wider appeal and success came because audiences were so enraptured by seeing an entire family of dwarfs who happened to be great musicians. Their dwarfism was an asset to them, as it would have been in the circus ring. Circuses sought out disabled performers because audiences enjoyed them more. This appeal was not limited to freak shows, which by the 1930s were often dark corners of the circus because they were seen as disturbing, exploitative, dehumanizing, even to audiences “way back then.” Disabled performers in the main show were a draw, an attraction that audiences would not feel guilty about. People pretended to be disabled to get jobs in the circus.
What you should read instead:
-Giant: The Dwarfs of Auschwitz, a superb non-fiction book that details the Ovitz family’s lives leading up to and during the Holocaust.
-Thistlefott by GennaRose Nethercott. It tells the story of two Jewish siblings who grew up in a famous puppeteer family. As adults, they inherit Baba Yaga’s house, inspiring them to take up the family business together, while being chased down by a dark force that led to the death of their ancestors. This book is a beautiful representation of the struggle confronting darkness in Jewish family history. It’s an experience personal to GennaRose Nethercott, whose mother’s family survived a pogrom in Ukraine.
This story had me from the prologue. So much sadness and heartbreak in those first few pages. But then the reader also finds out that there are some secrets that are not revealed as well. So intriguing.
And then the reader gets to become a part of the exciting world of the circus. But to the people who work in the circus, that is their normal, everyday life, with joy and plenty of struggles. The life of Lena is a hard one but she is a survivor and becomes close friends with a young boy who truly believes in her.
This is a wonderful historical fiction story that gives the reader a different look at life during World War II and the control that the Nazis had over so many people. It's a story of the struggles and strength of a group of people who had to do whatever they needed to do to survive. There are plenty of surprises along the way that made their story that much more interesting.
This book is touted as must-read for fans of The Night Circus and Water for Elephants. I loved both of those stories and I feel like The Circus Train one is right up there with those two books. Check it out!
And then the reader gets to become a part of the exciting world of the circus. But to the people who work in the circus, that is their normal, everyday life, with joy and plenty of struggles. The life of Lena is a hard one but she is a survivor and becomes close friends with a young boy who truly believes in her.
This is a wonderful historical fiction story that gives the reader a different look at life during World War II and the control that the Nazis had over so many people. It's a story of the struggles and strength of a group of people who had to do whatever they needed to do to survive. There are plenty of surprises along the way that made their story that much more interesting.
This book is touted as must-read for fans of The Night Circus and Water for Elephants. I loved both of those stories and I feel like The Circus Train one is right up there with those two books. Check it out!
Slow start and never got exciting. Entirely mediocre.
4.25 stars.
This was sweet story. I liked it a lot because its main focus was on the 3 main characters: Lena, Alexandre, and Theo, with WWII as a backdrop. The book felt very "good vibes only in a bad situation" so it was hard to suspend disbelief for too long when it was only focusing on the less bad parts of the time period. There were a lot of coincidences that happened along the way that kind of took me out of a full immersion into the story. Despite that, the book was enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to read a WWII novel without the brutality of the war.
"To truly know a person ... do not ask him who he is. Rather, observe what he does" (p. 78).
"Adelpha was a human magpie" (p. 96).
"Life is fickle ... If you have a chance to be happy, take it" (p. 367).
"You can weigh the benefits and risks all you want, but at some point, you have to dive in and hope that the odds are in your favor" (p. 368).
This was sweet story. I liked it a lot because its main focus was on the 3 main characters: Lena, Alexandre, and Theo, with WWII as a backdrop. The book felt very "good vibes only in a bad situation" so it was hard to suspend disbelief for too long when it was only focusing on the less bad parts of the time period. There were a lot of coincidences that happened along the way that kind of took me out of a full immersion into the story. Despite that, the book was enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to read a WWII novel without the brutality of the war.
"To truly know a person ... do not ask him who he is. Rather, observe what he does" (p. 78).
"Adelpha was a human magpie" (p. 96).
"Life is fickle ... If you have a chance to be happy, take it" (p. 367).
"You can weigh the benefits and risks all you want, but at some point, you have to dive in and hope that the odds are in your favor" (p. 368).
Wow! Heart wrenching, beautiful, and gripping.
It's hard to put into words how moving this book is.
Underlying themes of not giving up, among others. The WWII time span and how the characters deal with that as well as their own issues was mesmerizing and at times difficult. I actually forced a break bc a part was overwhelming knowing world history.
The carnival aspect was fun, but a "backdrop" to the beauty of this story.
The authors note fully explains her research and what creative liberties she took.
Absolutely loved the disability representation.
All the characters are built so you root for everyone to succeed.
Amazing book! A dazzling novel that doesn't leave you guessing, ties up everything in a bow, and leaves you with that sigh of relief you get after a wonderful story.
It's hard to put into words how moving this book is.
Underlying themes of not giving up, among others. The WWII time span and how the characters deal with that as well as their own issues was mesmerizing and at times difficult. I actually forced a break bc a part was overwhelming knowing world history.
The carnival aspect was fun, but a "backdrop" to the beauty of this story.
The authors note fully explains her research and what creative liberties she took.
Absolutely loved the disability representation.
All the characters are built so you root for everyone to succeed.
Amazing book! A dazzling novel that doesn't leave you guessing, ties up everything in a bow, and leaves you with that sigh of relief you get after a wonderful story.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I am a big fan of historical fiction books and this book was so amazing and magical to read. It was a fast read but the characters were lovely and the story was very interesting! I like the notes the author put in the back, it was interesting to learn about the circus at that time and the model towns were shocking too. Overall a great read i would recommend to anyone.
I loved both the beginning and end of this book but the middle was lacking for me.
In reading the Q&A with the author Parikh, she talks about having always known how the novel would begin and end but struggled to fill in the middle pieces which was very apparent in the writing.
I did really like a lot of the unique ideas in the storyline and I’m always a sucker for a warm&fuzzy ending which this story definitely delivered.
Overall, this really was a good read, especially for Parikh being a first time author.
I’d love to see her write from first person rather than third in future novels. I think it would help with the choppiness I felt as a reader.
I’m definitely interested to see how she progresses as a writer & will definitely give her second novel a read.
In reading the Q&A with the author Parikh, she talks about having always known how the novel would begin and end but struggled to fill in the middle pieces which was very apparent in the writing.
I did really like a lot of the unique ideas in the storyline and I’m always a sucker for a warm&fuzzy ending which this story definitely delivered.
Overall, this really was a good read, especially for Parikh being a first time author.
I’d love to see her write from first person rather than third in future novels. I think it would help with the choppiness I felt as a reader.
I’m definitely interested to see how she progresses as a writer & will definitely give her second novel a read.