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A review by readingwithcake
The Light at the End of the Day by Eleanor Wasserberg
3.0
Okay I begin with my only negative opinion on the writing style. When we had the POV of the mother and we would randomly we have the conscious of the neighbour? It was bizarre. It happens throughout the entire book where we would randomly get a line about what the neighbour, Janina, was thinking. There just needed to be more cohesiveness in the text. That one negative aside, I commend the author on capturing the feelings of disbelief, hysteria, horror, the list of emotions could go on, that would have been felt by those who in labour and concentration camps across Europe.
It was interesting to read a story written about a Jewish Polish family who essentially buried their head in the sand when the events leading up to WW2 were occurring and they still didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of their situation until towards the end of the book. There would have been families like this in Europe, the ones who didn’t flee when things started to get bad for Jews in Germany after 1933, the ones who stuck around even after Germany invaded and they knew about the pogroms occurring within Germany. So I really liked this aspect of reading the book, however with that being said I found it really hard to connect with Anna, the mother, who was so dismissive of the people who helped her and seemed so ungrateful. I guess she was grappling with her new reality of being a refugee and not the wealthy lady she was in Krakow but it did annoy me throughout and I found I didn’t connect with her character at all. Also her daughter was such a brat. I think it did capture the absolute hysteria that the Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other people felt who were taken to various camps over Europe during WW2. We see the family go to a camp in Russia, as this was a common occurrence in areas occupied by the Soviets to take Poles and Jewish people to camps. However, as mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to connect with the family this storyline followed due to their characters being portrayed the way they were.
I felt the ending was super rushed as well and wanted more detail about the years we didn’t get. The ending was sad but also beautiful ( read it and it makes sense why I say beautiful) and showed the reality of the camps, German and Russian alike.
It was interesting to read a story written about a Jewish Polish family who essentially buried their head in the sand when the events leading up to WW2 were occurring and they still didn’t seem to grasp the gravity of their situation until towards the end of the book. There would have been families like this in Europe, the ones who didn’t flee when things started to get bad for Jews in Germany after 1933, the ones who stuck around even after Germany invaded and they knew about the pogroms occurring within Germany. So I really liked this aspect of reading the book, however with that being said I found it really hard to connect with Anna, the mother, who was so dismissive of the people who helped her and seemed so ungrateful. I guess she was grappling with her new reality of being a refugee and not the wealthy lady she was in Krakow but it did annoy me throughout and I found I didn’t connect with her character at all. Also her daughter was such a brat. I think it did capture the absolute hysteria that the Jews, Poles, Gypsies and other people felt who were taken to various camps over Europe during WW2. We see the family go to a camp in Russia, as this was a common occurrence in areas occupied by the Soviets to take Poles and Jewish people to camps. However, as mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to connect with the family this storyline followed due to their characters being portrayed the way they were.
I felt the ending was super rushed as well and wanted more detail about the years we didn’t get. The ending was sad but also beautiful ( read it and it makes sense why I say beautiful) and showed the reality of the camps, German and Russian alike.