Once again, as nobody else has written up this book, it is up to me using the notes that I took as we discussed it last night.
It was a memorable book. Rather than saying that we enjoyed it, it was more fascinated by the story.
It was a combination of fiction woven around non-fiction events and very hard to tell the change.
The story was about a little jewish girl that was taken on by the author's grandparents during the war, and was written around a number of interviews that he did with Lien, where he then roams around the districts that she mentions and sees how they have changed since the war. I don't know whether he embellishes the stories that Lien tells him, or if he frees up her memory to tell him more as time goes on. He fills up the book with the background history of the way that the Nazis behaved in the Netherlands during the war, and what they did to the Jews.
Lien is treated as any other child in the Van Es household except for the rapes by the uncle. She must have been very traumatised by that time as she just accepts what happens to her.
As an adult she falls out with Ma Van Es, partly becauee of her divorce and for other reasons, but in later life she is healed by meeting other children who were hidden like her, and also meeting a friend from her early schooling.
Comments from us:
The hsitory of Jews in Holland, Quite long in some ways becasue of this added material.
I couldn't tell if it was a biography of Lien, or a history of Jewish Holland. Holland had been very receptive to Jews and all other peoples before the war.
H. thought ti was absolutely brilliant. It was based on a true story and an interweaving of fiction and non-fiction.
P. found it frustrating. the hook into the book was the falling out over such a trivial thing. and how the girl was traumatized. It is a book I will remember, some of it quite harrowing, but a happy ending.
L. Survival with deprivation.
Author : Extremely blunt stuff about Holland - How would the book go over in Holland?
H. Relevance of book with respect to 2022 ukraine
B. Interesting but not engaging. almost just a list of events.[5] Liked style but not brilliantly written.
Our marks averaged at 7. Would we recommend the book - hard to say.
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