Lilac Girls by Martha Hall KellyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The story: This Holocaust novel is told from three perspectives: Kasia, a Polish prisoner at Ravensbrück; Caroline Ferriday, a former actress who works at the French embassy; and Herta Oberheuser, a doctor at Ravensbrück who proudly performs experiments on the prisoners. The story itself is a true one. Oberheuser was convicted of Nazi war crimes, and Ferriday was an incredible social activist. The character of Kasia is based on a group of Polish women prisoners nicknamed "The Rabbits," on whom Oberheuser performed horrible experiments.
My reaction: The real story itself is amazing. I would love to read more about Caroline Ferriday and these incredible women known as The Rabbits after reading this novel. It's a story that needs to be told and keep being told so that it never happens again. But… honestly, the whole novel was choppy and disconnected. I should have cried as I read this novel; instead, I felt as emotionally detached and perplexed at the flatness of these characters that yearned to be richly developed. Caroline was the most developed character, yet the bulk of her chapters had to do with a romance that seemed extraneous to the actual story. Oberheuser was utterly flat. And Kasia—ah, what a missed character opportunity. I suspect there was more to the novel originally—more scenes that would further character development—and the author was advised to shorten it.
I admire the research that Kelly put into the novel. According to her afterword, she spent years studying the letters of Ferriday and documents pertaining to the atrocities at Ravensbrück. She traveled to the town in Poland where many of these women came from, retraced their train ride to the camp, investigated the camp itself.
In spite of my overall feeling of disconnect, I would recommend the novel because the story itself is one that should be told and remembered, hopefully encouraging us to use our outrage to help others in whatever way we can.
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1 comment:
Good to know I'm not the only one. I really expected to like this but it left me a little flat and disappointed. I never really connected with the characters which tends to be a fatal flaw as far as my enjoyment of a book is concerned.
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