Prisoner B-3087

Based on the true story of Jack Gruener, Alan Gratz has created a fictional account of Jack’s time spent in ten different concentration camps during the Holocaust.  His depictions of the ghettos, train cars, camp barracks, death marches, torture, and death are very honest.  He has described horrid conditions that no human should have to witness, let alone live through, without sensationalism. 

Yanek Gruener is a Jewish boy growing up in Poland in the 1930’s when the Nazis take over.  Under their rule his life changes dramatically as he undergoes one tragedy after another.  Although he manages to survive ten concentration camps and two death marches, Yanek is not always optimistic.  After a while, the death he sees is just commonplace.  He is terrified of it, determined not let it take him, but accepts it because there is no other option.  At times he wonders if it is better to dead. 

I appreciated how Yanek was portrayed.  Written in a first person narrative, it allows the reader to enter the story a little more, but you’re still kept at bay with the very clipped style of writing.  At the end, after he and his fellow survivors have been rescued by American soldiers, Yanek notes that “They couldn’t understand our tears, couldn’t know how amazing such a simple meal was to us….We could describe it.  Describe in every detail the horrors of the camps and the way we were treated.  But no one who had not been there would ever truly understand (251).”   

One Came Home by Amy Timberlake

This novel starts out with a funeral and the untimely death of the narrator’s sister.  Georgie Burkhardt doesn’t believe that her sister is dead, though, and she’s determined to find out the truth—with or without help.  Unluckily, help comes in the form of Billy McCabe, her sister’s former beau.  Set in 1871 in the town of Placid, Wisconsin during a great pigeon nesting that drives through Georgie’s town, sending the town into chaos.  Just like those wild pigeons are a force as they descend on Placid and the surrounding area, Georgie pushes along this story so that you’re there with her, determined to find her sister Agatha. 

Georgie reveals the past to us, the reason for Agatha’s departure, her relationships, and her personality through a series of flashbacks that help us understand, even before Georgie does, how her sister most likely died.  Even so, when Georgie finally does come around, I was suddenly on the other side.  No, she might still be there.  Georgie lost hope, but I kept it for her.  I thought it beautiful how Amy Timberlake made this happen.  It’s almost as if Georgie’s convincing has worked, but not for herself. 

Georgie’s quest to find the truth allows her to learn much about her sister, feeling again close to her, as well as angry at her for putting them all in this situation.  Moreover, she’s able to learn about herself, questioning what she has always known as the truth, and learning actual truths that she never wanted to know. 

I found myself pulled into this story from the get go.  Georgie is an easy character to follow.  She doesn’t demand that you burrow in and accept what she’s saying.  She’s likable, even though she does some unlikeable things.  My only real issue with this book is that I had a hard time really believing that Georgie belonged in this time period.  I can’t pinpoint what caused this feeling, but Georgie seemed like a more modern girl and belonged in more modern times.  It wasn’t due to her abilities, which were not skills that would have been encouraged in a young girl in the late 1800s, but in her voice.  Something about the way she spoke was too modern.  It may have even been too sheltered for a girl living in this growing town, learning to shoot, and traipsing through the woods.  I almost felt like she should have been more mature than she was due to this time period.  Needless to say, it took me out of the space every now and then.

This is a great read and I recommend it for readers who enjoy an adventure.  Georgie definitely has her fair share of adventure in this quest for the truth.  If you really like historical fiction, this may or may not be for you, depending on if you can believe that she really belongs in this time period.

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

Dutton Books

2012

The Fault in Our Stars is a story about many things.  It’s about love and loss, yes, but it’s also about so much more.  Hazel and Augustus are just teenagers, yet already deciding who they are and what mark they will leave on the world.  Will it be a heroic and inspiring legacy they leave in which the universe will remember them?  Or will it be a hurtful and selfish stain thrown on humanity that keeps their memory alive?  Or when they leave this world, will the memories of them also fade?

Hazel has known she will die for years now.  Diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has been given a gift in the form of a drug trial that has managed to keep her tumors from growing.  She goes through her teenage life carting around an oxygen tank, watching America’s Next Top Model, and devouring her favorite novel An Imperial Affliction over and over again.  When she meets Augustus, a cancer survivor who lost his leg as a side effect, her life changes. 

Although this book is full of death and Hazel’s focus on death could be incredibly depressing, it doesn’t feel like your typical cancer book.  Hazel is not a character out of a Lurlene McDaniel book, positive all the time, with inspiring goals and an I-can-do-this attitude.  She is bleak about her life and honest about her fears of hurting everyone around her.  She tries to minimize the inevitable pain by making as few connections as possible.  This isn’t done in a loving and selfless way.  Instead this fear is about herself, about what type of person that makes her if she allows others to be hurt by her death.  She is a whiny teenager, arguing with her parents, annoyed by their hovering, and desperately trying to keep herself out of a relationship with Augustus.  Small spoiler:  they get together.

All the characters in this novel are lovely.  They are real.  Hazel, Augustus, and their friend Isaac talk openly and honestly about the people in their lives and how much it truly sucks to have cancer.  I appreciated this.  You see their flaws, but love them all the same.  And your heart breaks along with theirs. 

The most intriguing thing about An Imperial Affliction, the book with which Hazel and Augustus are obsessed is the way it ends, without an ending at all really—the main character just stops midsentence.  Hazel is haunted by this, needing to know, not what happened to Anna, the main character (it’s obvious that this character has died) but what happens to everyone else.  Are they okay?  Do they move on?  Are they happy?  This all reflects back on Hazel’s own fear of hurting her family and friends by dying and leaving them behind.  She refers to herself as a grenade that will tear everyone near her apart, and she needs the assurance of An Imperial Affliction’s author to give her that.

There is so much I want to say about this book.  The language is so beautiful, and although in most circumstances I would roll my eyes at the words these teenagers use, it’s believable here.  It’s obvious that Hazel is very smart and she devours books, so it makes sense that she would speak with such verbosity and confidence.  There were moments when I had to pause and go back and read a line or paragraph because it was so beautifully written that it deserved another look. 

I was taken by this book and angry at it as well.  What I assumed when I started reading the novel did not happen and as soon I realized what would happen in this book, I was so incredibly angry.  The characters are written so well and we become so attached to them and we think we are prepared for the worst.  In fact, the entire book has been set up to prepare us, to ease us into the inevitable.  Instead we’re blindsided with reality and it crushes.  I’m not sure if I feel tricked or not.  I’m not sure if I really like this novel for doing this, for eliciting such emotion, or if I feel as if John Green and I had an agreement and then he broke it.  I guess I feel a little bit like Hazel and Augustus when they finish reading An Imperial Affliction.  Cheated.