The abbreviation of a name and the forging of a fiction that feels so much like truth really makes this occupy an emotionally effective liminal space. One which most stories like this don’t typically engender, at least for me. I’m used to be in a macro perspective, completely unable to imagine really, but nevertheless empathize. Here, it manages to be one step further. With the choice of diction and what is on the page, I think there is no question of any of this not happening, yet it has the benefits of fiction as well.

It is the most affecting book on war I’ve ever read. From the very start, only with S. In the hospital, giving birth to a child conceived by sexual assault, it is gripping and truly visceral. A word I do not use unless I mean it, because it’s become far too popularized, imo. It is the right word for this story. You really need to be prepared for all manner of degradation, but also the immense humanization. It doesn’t feel highly dramatized nor formulaic. And yet you do know what will happen next, I think. The amount of granularity and the choice of what to show “on camera” is perfect.

I can’t think of a thing it could have done better. Horrific, too, that every name is abbreviated, because it suggests that it could be absolutely anybody, removing the possible foreign language distance, and maintaining any kind of privacy that might have felt to be impinged upon.