Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when they were circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a "gentlemen's club" without her father's knowledge.
But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire? (Summary and pic from goodreads.com)
My Review: This book surprised me a lot. I consider myself as
somewhat well-versed in WWII and the history of it. I don’t know everything
(and I certainly can’t label all the different planes used in both the Pacific theater
and in Europe, like my grandpa), but I feel like I’m not clueless. There has
been some absolutely stellar historical fiction that has come out in the past several
years about WWII and if you haven’t read any of it, then you are sorely missing
out. However, as an educated and intelligent reader of this blog, I’m sure that
you have. That all being said, I was not aware of the events depicted in this
book—namely, that many Jews fled to Shanghai because they could go without a
visa. I mean, how did I not know this? There were Americans there, too, but in
the end they were actually put in camps. However, the Jews survived there,
although it was really difficult. I just…I’m really glad I read this book
because I feel like it is something I didn’t know anything about.
When I first picked up this book, I thought I would be
reading about a family of Jewish circus performers. I thought that would be the
thing. This does play a huge part, especially for the daughter and main
character, Lillia. But really, the story is about this family trying to survive
in a country where the culture is so different from theirs and they are forced
to take any kind of work just to live. It’s also about the camaraderie and love
that come from good people living in difficult situations—they take care of one
another, they watch out for one another, and they become a family.
As with all WWII stories, this book is difficult and really
sad. There are innumerable losses, and even when sometimes those losses turn
out not to be an actual loss, per se, things can never be the same. People die unexpectedly
and tragically, they disappear unexpectedly and tragically, and the whole world
struggles. Since I haven’t read about Jews in Shanghai I wasn’t aware of the
difficulties that the Chinese government imposed on them, as well as the
cultural struggles between the Jews and the Chinese, as well as the Americans
and other foreigners living in Shanghai.
I enjoyed the story in this book, but I especially liked
that everything wasn’t neatly tied in a bow at the end, just like in real life.
Although there were many characters I would have liked to know more about, I
felt that the author did a good job of creating a story that included many
facets of this very difficult and delicate situation.
Sometimes I get tired of reading WWII fiction; the only
reason I can give is that sometimes it’s just too hard to read about the
struggles and difficulties. I know some people that pretty much only read
historical fiction, however. No matter what camp you are in, I think this is a
good book to read, if only to give you a perspective on a part of WWII history
that I feel is under-covered. In order to round out your knowledge about what
was going on, and to get a better picture of how the war affected people who
weren’t even in the war, books like this give a much-needed change from the
normal literature in the genre.
My Rating: 4 Stars
For the sensitive
reader: As with many WWII books, this has some very difficult descriptions of
violence as well as trauma inflicted upon Jews and other sad casualties of war.
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