The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
My rating: 4/5 cats
it is dana’s birthday!
and as a wonderful birthday present, i am setting aside the proust for a minute, and taking the time to write a dana-requested book review! and before you start thinking that i give shitty presents, here is something else i gave her for her birthday:
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it’s her crush paul o’neill!! with an erection!! oh, i am so thoughtful…
but this book—let’s recover from the levity and put on our serious faces—although it draws from fairy tales and there is a sortof gauze of irreality permeating the story, there is some seriously disturbing violence here. i mean, these are nazis; their ovens aren’t in gingerbread houses, and there isn’t any way of tricking them into a death-scenario, because there are just too many of them. so this becomes, as the subtitle states, “a novel of war and survival.” the focus is how to live within a world ravaged by horrors—first the soviet union, then the germans—poland was a collection of battered individuals, just trying to stay alive. and this is a chronicle of that time, with a superimposed fairy tale of two jewish children, abandoned in the forest by their father and stepmother, in the hopes that they will survive; “passing” as gentiles called “hansel” and “gretel.” their story unfolds as the narrative splits to follow the father and stepmother, as well as various other characters impacted by the horrors of a war that doesn’t yet know it is over.
this is my go-to book when people ask for ww2 books that aren’t about spies. it’s a book that isn’t very well-known, but should be. and that’s where i come in, with my “put down that michael chabon and read something haunting and unknown!!”
i don’t want to give away any endings or emotions, so i can’t really say much more. there are some upsetting scenes, here, but there is also a whole lot of beauty; a whole lot of tenacity and just enough “fairy tale” to lighten the psychological burden.
happy birthday, dana!
sheeesh, write a review for a girl, and she doesn’t even notice.
maybe she is too busy with paul o’neill…..
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