Shirley’s Comments (group member since Apr 13, 2020)

Shirley’s comments from the Our Little Group SSSH group.

Have you finished already?

Yes, I’ll order it too. Will be interesting to see worst happened to her in the long run too. Did it say she was charged as a conspirator and sent to Siberia?

On your first point, should there have been more description/history of the other characters, I'm not sure there should have been, after all it was Lale's story. Also Gita for one made a point of not letting Lale know about her background and family, that seems to have been a behaviour that perhaps many prisoners had, as it was possibly too painful to let happier memories in. It might also be that the camps made people so entirely different from their actual selves that they wanted to separate themselves from the world before.
We learnt very little about many of the other characters, but this could be an accurate portrayal of Lale's experience; they were not inclined to 'share'.
I did enjoy the small bits of information we got on the gypsy communities and Lale's clear admiration of their way of life, would have liked more on that.

There’s still your three questions.

Continued

... Jakub and Leon.

The epilogue, author’s note and the other further reading were I thought essentially what should have been content of the novel, as it was here that I learned most about Lale and Gita (Lisa Tarbuck).

I’d really have liked this book to have been at least twice as long to really do justice to Lale, but having said that any survivor’s story is worthy of any retelling.
Would suggest reading Prmo Levi.

Sorry Sarah, I know you’ll think I’ve been too harsh 😬

I also got a lot out of this book. I would say that the fact that Morris is a screen writer and initially wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay had a negative effect on the novel as a whole. During the first hundred or so pages I found the use of present tense a little distracting and grating as if the author were continually giving stage directions. The use of italics to show us Lale’s thoughts was also a little simplistic as though he only ever had one fleeting moment of reflection. His feelings and thought processes really could have been expanded on, perhaps then we could have got to know him better.
The events were also rushed through in many parts as if Morris were just ticking items off a list, even to the quite abrupt ending. Despite all of this, the events of Lale’s story were incredibly moving and it was the recounting of these that outweighed the writing, making this a far more emotional read. It was the glimpses of others’ experience also made it so compelling Jakub, Leon, Cilka and Nadya.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Yes I am here!