terça-feira, 6 de dezembro de 2011

Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys

I'm submitting this book to the 2011 Debut Author Challenge, hosted by The Story Siren. I'm also submitting this to the YA Historical Fiction Challenge hosted by YA Bliss.


Review: What should I say about this book? Sometimes it seems that throughout the WWII there was some sort of competition to find out who could come up with the nastiest ways of hurting other human beings. For the Nazi side there seems to be many books and other documents that describe the atrocities of war, but that doesn't happen for the Soviet side. So, Between Shades of Gray was new to me, in the way that I had never read anything about the labor camps in Siberia.

Lina is a fifteen year-old Lithuanian girl that is taken away from her house and her country with her mother and brother. After a perilous journey by train, she is imprisioned in a labor camp, where she has to deal with hunger and cold, with worries for her family and the boy she cares for.

Reading about Lina's story, albeit fictional, was haunting and touching. To know that so many people went through this was so sad. I often wondered "what's the point of this?"; why send so many people to God-knows-where to do God-knows-what, in complete and utter isolation and just let them die? It seems such a waste.

The ending was left quite open, but the epilogue gives us some clues to Lina's life after the camps, and to when she was released. I loved this book and would completely recommend it.

Pages: 352

Publisher: Puffin Books

2 comentários:

  1. Estou indecisa quanto a este...já o tenho na wishlist há imenso tempo mas ainda não ganhei coragem para o encomendar. :(

    ResponderEliminar
  2. Eu gostei muito. Não é o tipo de coisa que costume ler, mas o facto de ser YA histórico e de mostrar um lado (o russo) pouco descrito em livros sobre a 2ª GM interessou-me. Não é mindblowing, mas é bastante bom, um pouco comovente e lê-se bem depressa. ;)

    ResponderEliminar