I went into this book blindly, not knowing what it was about and only having a vague idea of it being sad. The whole book is so beautifully composed it makes me feel so ignorant of the histories of countries that have suffered. I had known of dictatorship in SK but I hadn't known how bad it was, how traumatic for the families and survivors. It is so easy to define such atrocities in clean numbers, so sanitary and so devoid of emotion. Such things happen, we say and shrug, as if hundreds of thousands didn't lose their children, their fathers, their mothers, their siblings. As if they didn't have to carry the bodies of their high school children to early graves, as if they didn't search for their missing loved ones like madmen, still hoping for a sign, still praying for their lives. 

Some quotes that I loved and will keep thinking about for a long time from now:

"How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?"

"At the time, death seemed as though it would be something refreshing, like slipping on that new school uniform."

"Surrender,have you got that? Go out with your hands up. There's no way they'll harm a kid with his hands up."

"After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, 
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine,
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine,
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine."

"If I could hide in dreams.
Or perhaps in memories."