Book Review: Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

I'm not a big fan of reading via electronic devices, but I have significant down time at my job and am not allowed to have a regular book at my desk during work hours. One day, I was perusing Amazon, just goofing off, when I stumbled upon a cool perk that comes with Amazon Prime: Prime Reading!

Prime Reading is a cool bonus perk that comes with an Amazon Prime membership, allowing you free (outside of your Prime membership fees) online access to books, magazines, and other reading material. Most (maybe all?) are compatible with Amazon Kindle, although Prime Reading is NOT part of the Kindle Unlimited program. 

I've read a few books online through Prime Reading, and most recently finished Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. Those Who Save Us is a fictional novel shifting between the modern, Midwestern United States and Nazi Germany. It also shifts between a mother and daughter's stories. 

Anna, the mother in this novel, is a young woman in Nazi Germany, living under the roof of her brutish, Nazi-sympathizer father. She begins an affair with a Jewish doctor whom she hides in her home -- practically right under her father's nose -- and by whom she becomes pregnant. Ultimately, Anna ends up seeking refuge for herself and her baby girl with a female baker who turns out to be baking bread for the Nazis while also smuggling messages out of concentration camps and work crews for the Jews. Eventually, Anna is pulled into an affair with a high ranking, but brutal Nazi officer -- an affair she continues in order to protect her child from starvation and other horrors of Nazi Germany. 

In the modern, Midwestern United States, Anna's daughter, Trudy, has many questions about her father and her mother's life before they found their way to the USA. Trudy knows nothing of the true identity of her father and knows very little about her own mother, even after moving her mother into a senior citizen's home and then into Trudy's own home. Together, the two lead quite separate and quiet existences under the same roof, even after Anna discovers and is upset by the nature of Trudy's research project as a college professor, interviewing former Nazi sympathizers (and the occasional Nazi victim). 

Ultimately, through Trudy's interviews, she learns to understand and appreciate her mother, even as her mother refuses to confirm the truth about Trudy's childhood and parentage.

Overall, Those Who Save Us is a poignant, well paced novel that is worth reading. It is both contemporary and historical fiction. I highly recommend it! 

What are you reading and enjoying right now?

If you want to try Prime Reading, you'll need an Amazon Prime membership -- get a free 30-day Prime trial HERE. 

Book Review: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Whoa!

If there is one book I want you to read this year, it is Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. I was BLOWN AWAY by the lyricism of Ward's mastery over the English language combined with such an incredibly compelling story involving multiple generations, blurred lines between the living and the dead, and the interplay of race and privilege.

Sing, Unburied, Sing takes place in the modern South in the United States, specifically in rural Mississippi. It is a story covering multiple points of view--and is told from several points of view-- with overlapping and diverging concerns, goals, and experiences. The character at the heart of it all is young Jojo, a boy on the cusp of manhood, caught in that uncomfortable space of the early teen years where one often feels like a child while being expected to live up to adult-like expectations. Then, you have Jojo's little sister, three year old Kayla, their meth-addicted mother, Leonie, inmate father, Michael, and their grandparents. Woven throughout are two ghostly characters, Given and Ritchie, both of whom have passed away but whose souls are bound to earth.

Jojo, his sister, and their grandmother clearly are able to interact with the souls of the dead--those bound to earth--but in different ways and oblivious of each other's abilities. Leonie, as well, seems to possess this power, although she attributes her visions to drug-induced hallucinations.

Ward weaves multiple tales into one with an attention to detail that leads to well rounded characters, so real that I almost felt Kayla in my arms when reading from Jojo's point of view.

But, above it all, the real reason you need to read Sing, Unburied, Sing is purely for the love of language. Ward is a master. Her novel is poetic in ways that you must read to fully appreciate.

I just love this description of young Kayla speaking:

"'Hi,' Kayla says, drawing the word out so that it's two long syllables, her voice rolling up and down a hill. It's the same thing she says to her baby doll when she picks it up first thing in the morning..."

Or a description of the children's father:

"When he started getting skinny, I thought it was because of his nightmares. When his cheekbones started standing out on his face like rocks under water, I thought it was because he was stressed out over money. When his spine rose under his skin, a line of knuckles punching up his back, I thought it was because of his grief and the fact he couldn't find another welding job anywhere..."

You may realize from the two bits of text above that Sing, Unburied, Sing is not a particularly upbeat novel. When I was a teenager, my mom once told me that she won't read anything I recommend because I only like to read, as she described it, "depressing novels." I don't know that I would go that far, but Sing, Unburied, Sing is definitely heavy.

And, I loved it.

Have you read Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward? What did you think?

Haven't read it yet, but really want to? Buy it HERE on Amazon.

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