I will admit that it took me awhile to get into this book, as the story started off in a relatively quiet manner, but after a few chapters, the story started to pick up and from there, I found the book hard to put down. Since the story starts off with the narrative in the present day (1990s) when Anna is in her 70s living in the U.S. and her daughter Trudy is already a middle-aged woman, I already knew of course that Anna survived whatever horrors and monstrosities she had encountered in her past. However that did not prevent me from wanting to know how she got there, from wanting to understand her back story and what caused her to inflict on herself such an impenetrable code of silence. I was actually less interested in Trudy's narrative in the beginning until I reached the halfway mark and realized what the author Jenna Blum was trying to do in terms of the parallelism between the two women's lives – after that, I became more engaged in Trudy's story and came to appreciate the subtle ways that Blum connected the two narratives.
I found it interesting the way Blum incorporated the interview segments into Trudy's narrative and how she put a unique spin to it by making it be from the German perspective. To me, these interview segments were powerful in helping to understand the extent to which the war affected everyone, regardless of one's background. It also showed the gruesomeness of human nature pitted against the instinct to survive as well as the resilience of the human spirit. Of course, Anna's story shows this as well, albeit in a different way, and rather than take away from Anna's experience or all the horrific things she had to endure, the interviews actually complement her narrative and puts things more into perspective.
My only complaint with this book is that, in my opinion, there was way too much time spent on describing the "intimate" scenes between Anna and the Obersturmfuhrer – some of the scenes were important (and therefore made sense why they would be included), but some of the scenes weren't and at times, it became a distraction that was unnecessary. I felt like this part of the story was a bit overdone and resulted in an imbalance to the rest of the story. The last third or so of the book felt rushed, almost as if after the relationship between Anna and the Obersturmfuhrer ended, there was nothing else much worth talking about until the revelation at the very end of the book. I felt like I wanted to know more about the "aftermath," about what happened in Germany after the liberation, about how Anna and Trudy pick up the pieces of their lives in America with Jack, etc. Yes, there were a few chapters on this in the last third or so of the book, but compared to all the time spent on Anna and the Obersturmfuhrer, it really wasn't much. I also didn't really like the ending all that much -- though it makes sense why it ended the way it did, I felt like something was missing, like the story should be continued somehow but instead the author chose to end it abruptly.
Overall, this was a well-written, well-researched book that was difficult to read at times due to the many realistic and raw depictions of violence and the incredibly abhorrent, inhuman treatment doled out by the horrific Nazi regime. This was also a very emotional read as well, as most books about WWII and the Holocaust are, though this one I felt was more gruesome and sadistic than most of the other similarly themed books I've read in recent years. The story itself was definitely engaging and well-told, though the lack of quotation marks did throw me off a number of times – a small annoyance in the grand scheme of things of course and not a deal-breaker by any means, but I think having quotation marks would have made it easier for me to immerse myself more fully into the story rather than having to pay attention to where dialogue was supposed to start and end.
I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5 because it didn't blow me away like other similarly themed WWII-era books did and also because of some of the structural issues I mentioned earlier – regardless though, this is a book that absolutely should be read, if anything, for the myriad of questions it raises about human behavior, attitudes, beliefs etc. and how both unbridled power and deprivation of life's basic necessities in the face of war can push people to behave in the most deplorable ways. This book is disturbing, but it is definitely well-worth the read.
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