If members want to look at the complete list of the books given, please refer to the December blog. Two members were unable to attend the meeting but sent comments. Sue, who is reading Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman, commented that she loved the book, but it had taken a while to get into it.
Pauline was reading Euphoria by Lily King and she was also enjoying the book. Linda had read her book - I See You by Clare Mackintosh, but I doesn’t seem to have noted any comments. So in effect there is only one review, The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris read by Anne Marie, which made this month’s blog shorter than usual for this time of year.
There are some books you instinctively know you shouldn’t read; this was one of them. Like many people of my generation I had preconceptions of hideous, cruel and inhuman treatment of Jews and other people by the Nazis from the excellent documentary The World At War. Images of skeletal people in striped uniforms looking over barbed wire fences with blank expressions. More recent impressions were gained via a school visit to the camp by my daughter and the subsequent testimony of a survivor at my daughter’s school. I don’t think this true story should have been portrayed in the format of a book. At least not this book.
It is the love story of Lale Sokolov a Slovakian Jew who, due to his linguistic skills became the person who tattoos the prisoner numbers onto the arms of the inmates of this death camp. How his love for one such woman, Gita fuels his purpose to survive. This position was one of privilege and he received extra rations (which he shared with others) and the ability to move freely around the camp. As a story of love and survival I delighted in the fact that something positive and long term actually transcended this inhumanity, but I could not get over the niggling voice in my head that was my companion reading the book. Is this distracting from the horror of what most prisoners actually endured?
On a pure story level it is a heart-warming account of a resourceful, brave and charismatic hero who escapes death again and again. His character came over to me as Del-Boy who could actually speak several languages. If the setting had not been in Auschwitz- Birkenau I would not have continued to read it. I felt it was badly written and full of clichés. I think originally the author had intended the story to be seen as a film, so perhaps this explains some of the disjointed and often lazy writing.
However the memories are worth retelling but perhaps in a biographical format. There are a lot of other memorable incidents in the story that perhaps could have resulted in the development of a more powerful novel. The relationship Lale had with the SS officer who facilitated his romantic liaisons with Gita or perhaps more details about black market exchanges of food and medicines with those living outside the camp.
Obviously the book has been subject to all sorts of authenticity issues. But that would always have been the case with such a story, and Morris does say in defence this is just one person’s story. She argued she had written one person’s story of the Holocaust not the story of the holocaust. Although this is a reasonable point I personally feel you need to see the distressing reality of the camps to get a grasp of what actually happened. Anyone reading this in isolation would come away with a wholly inadequate and sanitised impression.
I would give this book a rating of three.
The book we are reading for January is The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
We also decided to take the book in second place as February’s choice and that was The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Our next meeting will take place on Thursday 7th February 2019
Venue to be confirmed.
