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bandherbooks 's review for:
Lilac Girls
by Martha Hall Kelly
First things first. I have bought approximately fifteen copies of this book for the library I work at. It is hugely popular, we can barely keep copies on the shelf. I picked it for the "Book to Art" book club program I lead and made the mistake of being influenced by it's popularity and by the pretty, innocuous looking cover. I DID NOT READ THE BLURB. Oops.
Spoiler alert and trigger warning, there are two graphic rapes in the first eighty pages.
The cover is widely misleading. This is a depressing historical fiction tale set during WWII and after, told in alternating third person narratives by three narrators. Two are based on historical figures. Herta, a German Nazi "doctor" who performs horrific medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners and Caroline Ferriday, an American socialite who's war-time charity work eventually transforms into a campaign to assist the survivors of these medical experiments. Kasia is an amalgamation of real survivors of the Ravensbruck concentration camp medical experiments, women called "rabbits."
I understand the impact and importance of the story, I just didn't want to read it, found it graphically disturbing, and a slog to read. The different POVs are inconsistent, and I'm in no mood to be in the mind of a Nazi or to even feel one hint of sympathy for her plight, even if she is raped by her employer who forces her to sew condoms before he assaults her. What the actual f.
The book is entirely focused on the "rabbits" who are almost entirely made up of Polish Catholic women, women who were political prisoners. Not sure how I feel about that right now.
I enjoyed the post-war portion of the story far more than the first half, as most similar books end with the war. I appreciated Kelly showing that while America was moving on, tired of hearing "sad stories," the rest of the world was still traumatized and barely recovering, especially places under the Iron Curtain.
I'm also growing tired of the world considering books like this "literature" because of the historical context. If it isn't depressing and horrific, it can't be worthy, right? Forget it. I'm back to my HEAs.
Spoiler alert and trigger warning, there are two graphic rapes in the first eighty pages.
The cover is widely misleading. This is a depressing historical fiction tale set during WWII and after, told in alternating third person narratives by three narrators. Two are based on historical figures. Herta, a German Nazi "doctor" who performs horrific medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners and Caroline Ferriday, an American socialite who's war-time charity work eventually transforms into a campaign to assist the survivors of these medical experiments. Kasia is an amalgamation of real survivors of the Ravensbruck concentration camp medical experiments, women called "rabbits."
I understand the impact and importance of the story, I just didn't want to read it, found it graphically disturbing, and a slog to read. The different POVs are inconsistent, and I'm in no mood to be in the mind of a Nazi or to even feel one hint of sympathy for her plight, even if she is raped by her employer who forces her to sew condoms before he assaults her. What the actual f.
The book is entirely focused on the "rabbits" who are almost entirely made up of Polish Catholic women, women who were political prisoners. Not sure how I feel about that right now.
I enjoyed the post-war portion of the story far more than the first half, as most similar books end with the war. I appreciated Kelly showing that while America was moving on, tired of hearing "sad stories," the rest of the world was still traumatized and barely recovering, especially places under the Iron Curtain.
I'm also growing tired of the world considering books like this "literature" because of the historical context. If it isn't depressing and horrific, it can't be worthy, right? Forget it. I'm back to my HEAs.