Between Shades Of Grey by Ruta Sepetys
Dec. 31st, 2012 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
That morning, my brother’s life was worth a pocket watch …
One night fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother and young brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia.
An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begin. Lina doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her father or her friends again. But she refuses to give up hope.
Lina hopes for her family.
For her country.
For her future.
For love – first love, with the boy she barely knows but knows she does not want to lose …
Will hope keep Lina alive?
Set in 1941, Between Shades of Grey is an extraordinary and haunting story based on first-hand family accounts and memories from survivors.
15-year-old Lina’s life is turned upside down when she, her mother and her brother are taken from her home in the middle of the night by the Soviet soldiers who have recently invaded Lithuania. All Lina knows is that her father’s been separately taken (his fate unknown) and the Soviets have labelled them as thieves and subversives. They’re deported to Siberia to work in a labour camp to atone for their “crimes”. The guards are brutal. Life is harsh. For sensitive, artistic Lina, the horrors are unimaginable but she continues to hope because hope is all that keeps her and her family alive …
Ruta Sepetys’s debut YA novel is a harrowing, brutal and personal tale of the horrors suffered by the people of the occupied Baltic states at the hands of the Soviet invaders. There are times when it’s difficult to read and I think that its impact is very much let down by an abrupt ending, but this is a powerful debut that well deserved its critical reception and deals with a subject that the West is willing to brush under the carpet.
Intelligent and sharp tongued, Lina’s a little too fast and free with her opinion in a world where opinions can get you killed. Seen through her eyes, the journey to Siberia and camp life is particularly bleak and it is at times difficult to read the casual cruelty of the guards (which extends to killing children and grief stricken mothers). Her relationship with Andrius, whose mother is bullied into serving as a comfort woman for the guards is fraught with tension with each suspecting the other’s motives. I enjoyed the way Sepetys shows the small acts of kindness that sustain them through their hardship.
Central to the book though is the relationship between Lina and her mother, who speaks Russian and who keeps the Lithuanians united against the Russians but doesn’t judge those who give in. The mother is an incredible character and I loved her strength and dignity and the lengths she’ll go to in order to protect her family.
Although based on the experiences of Sepetys’s family, unfortunately the book’s let down by an abrupt ending that’s topped off with a postscript that felt tacked on. Given the awfulness of Lina’s predicament, I wanted to know how she makes it out of it and could easily have read a longer book.
The Verdict:
Ruta Sepetys’s debut YA novel is a harrowing, brutal and personal tale of the horrors suffered by the people of the occupied Baltic states at the hands of the Soviet invaders. There are times when it’s difficult to read and I think that its impact is very much let down by an abrupt ending, but this is a powerful debut that well deserved its critical reception and deals with a subject that the West is willing to brush under the carpet.
One night fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother and young brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia.
An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begin. Lina doesn’t know if she’ll ever see her father or her friends again. But she refuses to give up hope.
For her country.
For her future.
For love – first love, with the boy she barely knows but knows she does not want to lose …
Will hope keep Lina alive?
Set in 1941, Between Shades of Grey is an extraordinary and haunting story based on first-hand family accounts and memories from survivors.
15-year-old Lina’s life is turned upside down when she, her mother and her brother are taken from her home in the middle of the night by the Soviet soldiers who have recently invaded Lithuania. All Lina knows is that her father’s been separately taken (his fate unknown) and the Soviets have labelled them as thieves and subversives. They’re deported to Siberia to work in a labour camp to atone for their “crimes”. The guards are brutal. Life is harsh. For sensitive, artistic Lina, the horrors are unimaginable but she continues to hope because hope is all that keeps her and her family alive …
Ruta Sepetys’s debut YA novel is a harrowing, brutal and personal tale of the horrors suffered by the people of the occupied Baltic states at the hands of the Soviet invaders. There are times when it’s difficult to read and I think that its impact is very much let down by an abrupt ending, but this is a powerful debut that well deserved its critical reception and deals with a subject that the West is willing to brush under the carpet.
Intelligent and sharp tongued, Lina’s a little too fast and free with her opinion in a world where opinions can get you killed. Seen through her eyes, the journey to Siberia and camp life is particularly bleak and it is at times difficult to read the casual cruelty of the guards (which extends to killing children and grief stricken mothers). Her relationship with Andrius, whose mother is bullied into serving as a comfort woman for the guards is fraught with tension with each suspecting the other’s motives. I enjoyed the way Sepetys shows the small acts of kindness that sustain them through their hardship.
Central to the book though is the relationship between Lina and her mother, who speaks Russian and who keeps the Lithuanians united against the Russians but doesn’t judge those who give in. The mother is an incredible character and I loved her strength and dignity and the lengths she’ll go to in order to protect her family.
Although based on the experiences of Sepetys’s family, unfortunately the book’s let down by an abrupt ending that’s topped off with a postscript that felt tacked on. Given the awfulness of Lina’s predicament, I wanted to know how she makes it out of it and could easily have read a longer book.
The Verdict:
Ruta Sepetys’s debut YA novel is a harrowing, brutal and personal tale of the horrors suffered by the people of the occupied Baltic states at the hands of the Soviet invaders. There are times when it’s difficult to read and I think that its impact is very much let down by an abrupt ending, but this is a powerful debut that well deserved its critical reception and deals with a subject that the West is willing to brush under the carpet.
