A review by terranstorm
The Lilac People by Milo Todd

challenging hopeful reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

“They had survived. And none of them knew why.” 
 
This is a stunning and heart-wrenching story of queer resistance, persistence, and even joy in the face of terror. Much of the historical fact referenced here is basically unheard of in American education, and the author weaves an incredible narrative from those threads and the fictional main characters. I found this novel at once reflective and also propulsive, the mix of waiting and enduring, breath held, and resisting, fighting, fleeing, hiding with blood pumping and hearts racing. All that and complying, too—and questioning one’s compliance, even if it is done to survive. The survivor's guilt of it all. 

The prose is clean and direct, and yet so many scenes are going to stick with me, more beautiful and awful than they have any right to be. 
 
On the historical end of things, while I went into this read particularly interested in the rich detail it promised (and delivered) regarding the state of queer & trans community and the state of progress in Berlin before the Nazi’s took power, what surprised me most was the rare and important insight into how the Allies behaved at the end of the war—how the homosexuals and trans people were not freed, not saved, very much left to rot. How the American soldiers committed atrocities and terrorized vulnerable people in the name of punishing Germans but ultimately lashing out just because they could. How America knowingly aided and abetted fleeing Nazis. I knew many of these data points, historically-speaking, but you rarely see them depicted like this in media. There are some scenes that are so chilling due not to their brutality but rather their simplicity? Mundanity? that I think we would all do well to read and sit with, especially Americans.

“There is teaching, and then there is listening.” 
 
A powerful and important read in present times. Highly recommended.

(Do check the content warnings on this one for sure. Much of the violence is off-screened but still, the atrocities are captured vividly even through threat and intimation, in the retelling of a traumatized survivor, in human artifact, etc.)
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