I will not be able to do this book justice no matter how I review it. I have read ( and kept) every book this author has published and this has to be one of her best to date!
Sage is a baker, preferring to spend her nights working and her days in her own company following a tragic accident that has left her facial features scarred and her self esteem in her boots. She befriends a German elderly man , Josef , a pillar of the community but just as begins to feel comfortable in her friendship with him he drops a bombshell. He tells her that he used to be in the Gestapo during the war and has committed brutal acts for which he wants forgiveness and her help in dying. Sage has issues with this request and feels that surely if she acts on his will she will be as bad as he was.
The story is told as Picoult does with most of her novels through the eyes of the different characters in the novel. Sage , Josef, Leo an officer in the Department of Justice and Minka who is Sage's grandmother and who lived through the holocaust. Intertwined is a tale of gruesome beasts that Minka wrote as she was growing up through this harrowing time.
Minka's story takes up the bulk of the book and it is so easy to slip into her world that you forget any of the other characters exist. The descriptions of life for Jews under Hitler's rule is horrendous and stomach churning. Most of us in our lifetime have read about the horrors of the concentration camps and the people that went through them but despite this fact the author makes you feel like you are right there with these characters and pulled out a range of emotions in me I didn't think possible. The scene that will stick with me for a long time was of Minka's sister and her baby, I will not expand in fear of spoiling it but you will understand if you have read the book. For such a small part in the book it really left an impact on me showing how well the author can convey her tale.
As always she has twists running through the tale and this only ensured I was gripped throughout. I dare anyone to read this and not feel like they have been through an emotional roller-coaster.
Forgive Me ~ Lesley Pearse
I never fancied any of this author's books before despite a good friend encouraging me to read them however the subject matter of this one grabbed me and so I thought I would give it a whirl and I was glad I did.
The novel opens with Flora planning and carrying out her suicide, her daughter Eva finds her and life will never be the same again. She struggles at the tender age of 21 to hold it all together for her family when her father announces he is not her dad and asks her to leave. Eva has been left a studio once used for an artist's workshop in London by her mother and realising she has no option sets up home there. She learns bits from her mother's life from friends who had attended the funeral and begins to delve deeper into Flora's life.
Meeting Phil her saviour after being mugged she tries to piece her life together continuing to research her mother's past despite being warned off by a psychic . A tale full of unexpected twists , believable characters and extremely hard to put down. And yes I will try another of her books!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment