Those Who Save Us

The third (and final--for now) installment of my WWII era books was yet another good one. Granted, I don't think I've found a WWII era book that I haven't enjoyed... But that's another story. Let's not distract from the story at hand.

This story provides another unique perspective to the war, although it wasn't quite what I was expecting based on the book's jacket. According to the summary, the book seems to be about a woman's journey to discover the truth about the past her mother refuses to talk about. Which, in truthfulness, it does. But just not the way I was perceiving. I was imagining the book being told solely through the eyes of Trudy (the daughter) and the ups and downs of her quest (which, for the record, I thought might be a little dull). However, the book is actually a joint-narration: half of it is indeed told from Trudy's perspective in the 1990s, but the other half is actually the story of her mother Anna, told as it was happening during wartime in Germany. And, at the end, the stories do come together (although maybe in a slightly unbelievable manner) and Trudy finds the answers she was looking for--answers the reader already knows because of the joint narration.

Pros and cons? Not really any major ones in either department. I did think that there was a really great meaning behind the title of the book (no matter how much we may despise something/someone, we may learn to love it if it is something that saves us), which can definitely apply to life outside of Nazi-occupied Germany. The book also flirts with how Germans reacted to the persecution of the Jews during the war, which I enjoyed and which left me interested in finding more literature on that perspective. I think that if Darrell read this book he would complain about some of the details and descriptions--at times you get this feeling like there is something important that is about to happen, but you have to read through a page or two of details and scene setting before you get there (those tend to be the parts of books that I end up skimming waaaay faster than I should). And some parts of the book did seem a little unbelievable and too coincidental, but I suppose that is what differentiates fiction from real-life. And it never gets so unbelievable that it distracts from the book. All in all, I definitely plan to keep an eye out for this book at used book stores, because I would definitely like to own my own copy and read it whenever I want. So hopefully that's telling enough to make you feel inspired to read this book yourself--I know I've been pretty tight-lipped on this review, but the whole book is slow revelation of a maze of secrets and I'd hate to give something away!