Between Shades of Gray in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jul 25, 2012 mussolet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-notmine-c, fav-read-2013

"Between Shades of Gray" tells a story that hasn't been told very often, despite it being necessary that people remember it. There have been countless novels about Jewish ghettos and Auschwitz, and rightly so, but somehow there hasn't been said much about the Gulags (apart from Doctor Zhivago). And yet it is just as important to remember what happened there.

With Ruta Septetys' main character, fifteen-year-old Lina, the reader is presented with a very approachable character. At the start of the b "Between Shades of Gray" tells a story that hasn't been told very often, despite it being necessary that people remember it. There have been countless novels about Jewish ghettos and Auschwitz, and rightly so, but somehow there hasn't been said much about the Gulags (apart from Doctor Zhivago). And yet it is just as important to remember what happened there.

With Ruta Septetys' main character, fifteen-year-old Lina, the reader is presented with a very approachable character. At the start of the book (and by "start" I mean no more than ten or twelve pages), Lina is a normal young girl who is annoyed by her brother, a bit irritated about her mom, and worried about her dad.
When the story follows her journey from Kaunas, Lithuania, to Belarus and then across the vast Russian landscape to her destiny beyond the Arctic Circle (virtually the other end of Russia), the reader can understand her personal journey, from a frightened girl to a young woman that has to stand up for herself in order to survive, with times of depression, hunger, fear and anger but also love and hope.

At the beginning of her story, she still talks about the names of strangers and what they did. When she learns not to care too much about others anymore because she can't afford it, it is heartbreaking to see her referring to people only with the childish notion of associating them with the first thing she noticed about them.
You also see her distancing herself in her art. She's good at drawing, and yet sometimes she can't express what she wants to, like when she is commissioned to draw an officer's portrait (for a few potatoes) and has to stop herself from drawing snakes instead of his face because she feels it like that.

The novel is strongest in moments like these, when you can see how much the things around her affect Lina, how difficult it will be for her to ever understand what has happened to her. In the very beginning she describes herself as being punished fo comitting no crime at all, as being viewed as "litter" by the government. This objectification runs through the entire book, and Lina's acceptance of it is the most frightening thing of all.

"These writings may shock or horrify you, but that is not my intention. It is my greatest hope that the pages [...] stir your deepest well of human compassion. I hope they prompt you to do something, to tell someone. Only then can we ensure that this kind of evil is never allowed to repeat itself."

The author follows the story with an afterword, describing her motivation for writing the book and clearing up some of the facts that get lost when you choose a child protagonist.
I think it is important for these people to have a talented, native English-speaking descendant write down their stories. It increases the people who carry that knowledge significantly, and even though I don't believe that things like this won't ever happen again, it is important that more people remember history and try to learn from it.

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