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alyce_withay 's review for:
Prisoner of Night and Fog
by Anne Blankman
I LOVE THIS BOOK.
no exaggeration, it is one of the best books i've read all year, and i'm sorry i waited to read it. however, i think there was a real purpose to the wait, as the parallels between the present day cultural and political climate of America and the cultural and political climate of 1930s Munich are eerily similar. this novel made me think. the amount of research that Anne Blankman put into this book is remarkable, and i believe it paid off because i've never read anything like it. tbh, i have gotten burnt out on WWII literature. this is not WWII lit. this is Hitler's rise to power through the eyes of a young woman in his inner circle, and it is fascinating.
not only that, through the novel Gretchen moves from a state of total indoctrination regarding antisemitism to realizing the wrong of that viewpoint and moving to change. it's not done overnight, nor is it a eureka immediate moment. it takes time and this shift is so well developed. there are places in the novel where this shift and Gretchen's internal dialogue is VERY. CLEARLY. SPELLED. OUT. YOU CANNOT. MISTAKE. HER. THINKING. on the one hand, it was bothersome, but on the other i really appreciated it, because this is a YA novel, and oftentimes YA readers need these important concepts spelled out to help form their own critical thinking skills.
Daniel is everything, full stop.
i appreciated the family dynamics and complexities so much. although i don't deal with Gretchen's family trauma myself, I think Anne Blankman does a superb job of putting the reader in an empathetic position for her father's trauma, her brother's trauma, and her own in reaction and response to the environment in which she lives.
i have read a few reviews that the German was unnecessary and incorrect. I can't speak to that. The German included did make me wish that I was listening to it as an audiobook because it stopped the flow in my reading as I attempted to correctly pronounce and understand the German terms and phrases.
All in all, 25/10. So happy to move onto the sequel!
SPEAKING OF SEQUEL: Blankman does an amazing job of encouraging readers to pick up the sequel without requiring them to do so. her ending was tidy, and i appreciated that. as such, i think this would be a great novel for the middle school/high school curriculum to learn about early WWII and the charismatic nature of Hitler, his ability to promote antisemitism as a way of life, and the culture of Jews in Munich in the early 1930s.
no exaggeration, it is one of the best books i've read all year, and i'm sorry i waited to read it. however, i think there was a real purpose to the wait, as the parallels between the present day cultural and political climate of America and the cultural and political climate of 1930s Munich are eerily similar. this novel made me think. the amount of research that Anne Blankman put into this book is remarkable, and i believe it paid off because i've never read anything like it. tbh, i have gotten burnt out on WWII literature. this is not WWII lit. this is Hitler's rise to power through the eyes of a young woman in his inner circle, and it is fascinating.
not only that, through the novel Gretchen moves from a state of total indoctrination regarding antisemitism to realizing the wrong of that viewpoint and moving to change. it's not done overnight, nor is it a eureka immediate moment. it takes time and this shift is so well developed. there are places in the novel where this shift and Gretchen's internal dialogue is VERY. CLEARLY. SPELLED. OUT. YOU CANNOT. MISTAKE. HER. THINKING. on the one hand, it was bothersome, but on the other i really appreciated it, because this is a YA novel, and oftentimes YA readers need these important concepts spelled out to help form their own critical thinking skills.
Daniel is everything, full stop.
i appreciated the family dynamics and complexities so much. although i don't deal with Gretchen's family trauma myself, I think Anne Blankman does a superb job of putting the reader in an empathetic position for her father's trauma, her brother's trauma, and her own in reaction and response to the environment in which she lives.
i have read a few reviews that the German was unnecessary and incorrect. I can't speak to that. The German included did make me wish that I was listening to it as an audiobook because it stopped the flow in my reading as I attempted to correctly pronounce and understand the German terms and phrases.
All in all, 25/10. So happy to move onto the sequel!
SPEAKING OF SEQUEL: Blankman does an amazing job of encouraging readers to pick up the sequel without requiring them to do so. her ending was tidy, and i appreciated that. as such, i think this would be a great novel for the middle school/high school curriculum to learn about early WWII and the charismatic nature of Hitler, his ability to promote antisemitism as a way of life, and the culture of Jews in Munich in the early 1930s.