is surviving enough
Author : Alex Rosenberg
Title : The Girl From Krakow
Published: 01/09/2015
Pages : 452
Genre : Historical Fiction
Publisher : Lake Union Publishing
It’s 1935. Rita Feuerstahl comes to the university in Krakow intent on enjoying her freedom. But life has other things in store—marriage, a love affair, a child, all in the shadows of the oncoming war. When the war arrives, Rita is armed with a secret so enormous that it could cost the Allies everything, even as it gives her the will to live. She must find a way both to keep her secret and to survive amid the chaos of Europe at war. Living by her wits among the Germans as their conquests turn to defeat, she seeks a way to prevent the inevitable doom of Nazism from making her one of its last victims. Can her passion and resolve outlast the most powerful evil that Europe has ever seen?
Having read so many books over the last few years on this subject and those similar you would have thought I would have become bored with the subject. Each time, however, I seem to find a new thing that draws me into the story and keeps me there. This was a book I came across while reading reviews of similar stories. Sometimes I feel it is hard to differentiate between the blurb on the back of these books. They all follow the same sort of premise a person trying to survive in occupied Nazi territory.
Rita's story takes us on a journey starting with her prewar days as she tries to find her way in life. From balancing a commitment to a higher education to finding love and what she hopes will be a fulfilling life. Everything starts to go wrong very quickly as she ricochets from one bad event to the next. I realize that for a lot of people who have read this book Rita seems less moral than a lot other similar stories. For me, I felt she was simply trying to find a way to survive and in the process find a little comfort where she could. It felt the author's background in philosophy strongly showed in his writing. Most people are not as black and white as we would like to believe. Along the way, we also get to learn the fate of those Rita holds dear to her. With them, I kind of felt a mixture of emotions, Some feeling like they were looking out simply for themselves. But ones again people find different ways to make their way through a horrendous situation.
Where this author strays from other books in this genre is his questioning the nature of how such things come to be. He compares Nazism to that of a virus spreading from one host to the next until it eventually burns out its host. I think at times it is a difficult concept to get your head around, as it seems like an all too easy way to for people to explain away what happened. And at times the story seems to get a bit lost in this as he try's to explain this concept. Maybe it's just too much trying to cram into one book. This also leads to some fairly disjointed section which for me slowed down the pace of the book. This is also not the only time the book feels a bit full as we also the dulling story of Poland trying to free itself from the constraints of German rule. While all of these topics hold interesting for me they felt like there were all struggling to breathe in amongst each other. Rita's own struggles are not an easy subject to tackle the length she goes through don't always make for pleasant reading.for me, I felt this was a book about a woman trying to find her missing son. A subject she feels a lot of guilt for as she is the one who sends him away in the hopes he will survive even if she doesn't. This may explain some of the choices she makes later on, in part punishing herself.
At the end of the day, this is not the best book out there dealing with the subject. It could, however, have been a lot worse. If you deal solely on Rita and her desire to survive and reunite that which she has lost that you will find this a good read.
Having read so many books over the last few years on this subject and those similar you would have thought I would have become bored with the subject. Each time, however, I seem to find a new thing that draws me into the story and keeps me there. This was a book I came across while reading reviews of similar stories. Sometimes I feel it is hard to differentiate between the blurb on the back of these books. They all follow the same sort of premise a person trying to survive in occupied Nazi territory.
Rita's story takes us on a journey starting with her prewar days as she tries to find her way in life. From balancing a commitment to a higher education to finding love and what she hopes will be a fulfilling life. Everything starts to go wrong very quickly as she ricochets from one bad event to the next. I realize that for a lot of people who have read this book Rita seems less moral than a lot other similar stories. For me, I felt she was simply trying to find a way to survive and in the process find a little comfort where she could. It felt the author's background in philosophy strongly showed in his writing. Most people are not as black and white as we would like to believe. Along the way, we also get to learn the fate of those Rita holds dear to her. With them, I kind of felt a mixture of emotions, Some feeling like they were looking out simply for themselves. But ones again people find different ways to make their way through a horrendous situation.
Where this author strays from other books in this genre is his questioning the nature of how such things come to be. He compares Nazism to that of a virus spreading from one host to the next until it eventually burns out its host. I think at times it is a difficult concept to get your head around, as it seems like an all too easy way to for people to explain away what happened. And at times the story seems to get a bit lost in this as he try's to explain this concept. Maybe it's just too much trying to cram into one book. This also leads to some fairly disjointed section which for me slowed down the pace of the book. This is also not the only time the book feels a bit full as we also the dulling story of Poland trying to free itself from the constraints of German rule. While all of these topics hold interesting for me they felt like there were all struggling to breathe in amongst each other. Rita's own struggles are not an easy subject to tackle the length she goes through don't always make for pleasant reading.for me, I felt this was a book about a woman trying to find her missing son. A subject she feels a lot of guilt for as she is the one who sends him away in the hopes he will survive even if she doesn't. This may explain some of the choices she makes later on, in part punishing herself.
At the end of the day, this is not the best book out there dealing with the subject. It could, however, have been a lot worse. If you deal solely on Rita and her desire to survive and reunite that which she has lost that you will find this a good read.
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