Lukasz Pukowiec từ Lišnica, Croatia

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11/22/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Lukasz Pukowiec Sách lại (10)

2018-04-29 21:31

Thiên Tài Khoa Học - Henry Ford Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Nhiều Tác Giả

Lina is preparing for bed one night when the Russian soldier come to take her and her family away. From this moment on her life will never be the same and she will find herself taking a dangerous journey from her native Lithuania to Siberia. Along the way, she will make friends, suffer losses and discover that to some people, her life and those of her countrymen means very little. I had never heard about this episode in history so this book was both very good in its general theme, human beings relating to one another in adversity, as well as serving as a gateway for me to do my own independent research on another blot on humanity's existence. I loved the character of Lina because she was so normal. She was not a shrinking violet waiting to be saved from herself but she did not also turn into a ninja warrior able to take down everything and everyone. My heart broke as I read of the indignities suffered by her and the other women, such as being forced to undress publicly while the soldiers ogled them and made jokes about their bodies. My heart was in my throat all through the story as I read in fear wondering when it would all be over. Would she, her mother and her brother every leave this work camp or would their dead bodies end up thrown in the forest like trash or down a hole dug with their own hands? By no means is Lina without faults, she takes risks that infuriated me like keeping her drawings and writing notes when she knows this could get her in serious trouble. But her strength of character, compassion and love for her family redeem her. Even her acts of carelessness feed back to her essential belief in what is right and standing up for it. Andrius, a boy a few years older than Lina, has also been ripped from his family and all he has left is his mother who is also traveling with him on the same train as Lina and her family. He is lucky to have escaped a more dreadful fate of either being killed earlier on in the Russian take over or being shot for some offense or another. His mother manages this by pretending he is mentally incompetent and she later pays an even higher price to keep him alive and get him a bit of an easier work load in the camp. This story is wrenching and I found myself getting emotional more than once. The inhumanity that we are able to muster toward each other remains a subject of much discussion and one that will continue until there are no humans left to quibble over it. It still remains heartbreaking to see how much pain we are able to inflict on our enemies and justify it to ourselves. But the willingness to live, to fight for survival even in the face of so much suffering speaks to man's inherent strength. I LOVED this book. It was great from start to finish and I am grateful to have the opportunity to have read it. There is a love story in here but it is very quiet which makes it even more powerful. Side Note: I found it odd that one of characters in the book referred to what was happening to them as "genocide". That immediately jumped out at me because I do not believe that that word came about until later in the war, or probably after the war ended and this book starts in 1941. Also I could be very wrong here but it seemed surprising that the prisoners were allowed to send letters out to family and loved ones. I do not know the history on this but it was surprising to me that despite all the brutality constantly visited on them, they would be given the liberty of corresponding with outsiders. **Review copy received from Philomel, a division of Penguin Group.

Người đọc Lukasz Pukowiec từ Lišnica, Croatia

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.