From Goodreads: Two Brothers is a heartrending story of two boys growing up under the darkening shadow of the Nazis. Born in Berlin in 1920 and raised by the same parents, one boy is Jewish, his adopted brother is Aryan. At first, their origins are irrelevant. But as the political landscape changes they are forced to make decisions with horrifying consequences.
Thoughts: This is my book group read for the month and since book group is today I thought I should get the review up! I chose this book for the group and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.
This is not the normal book you would expect from Ben Elton. No satire, no playing it for laughs, this is straight down the line serious. And so it should be. The subject matter as always is confronting and almost unbelievable.
Otto and Paulus are born on the same day as the German Socialist Workers Party, better known as the Nazi's. Through out the boys lives, Elton comments on what the Nazi party is doing at the same age. He takes attributes of that age and weaves it into the behaviour of the party, describing the party as a squalling baby to start,a tantruming toddler at about 3 years old and a surly, psychopathic teenager.
The twins however are not biological. One has been adopted, although it's not until much later in the book you know which one. And just like the time it was set in, to start with it didn't really matter.
Elton paints a picture of Germany between the wars and gives the reader a view into the state it was in when Hitler came to power. That background allows the reader to understand how the Nazi's came to power and how they were allowed to strip away the rights of a whole section of the community with little to no protest.
The boys form a friendship with a the daughter of a wealthy Jewish business man and the daughter of their nanny/ maid. This group of four and how they survive the war years becomes the basis of the second half of the book. It was here that I really started to get into the book. Watching how it played out, how the situations of the four shifted and changed and how they worked together (mostly) to try and ensure they all survived. The characters were strong and believable. Dagmar and Silke's animosity as they both developed feelings for the boys and the boys total blindness to all but Dagmar. Dagmar herself was an interesting and complex character who turned out to be more than I thought.
Elton weaves all aspects of this story together, keeping it tight, right until the end. The end game is astounding and heartbreaking for many reasons. At the end you step back to take in the whole picture and see how clever Elton was.
As with any book about Nazi Germany, Two Brothers is confronting at times. I still believe it is so important we continue to read and write about this time - may it never happen again.
Two Brothers gets 4 stars
* Did not like it
** It was OK
*** Liked it
**** Really liked it
***** It was amazing
From Goodreads:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus
tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s
Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s
story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive.
Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out
of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us
closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (The New York Times).
Maus is
a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is
woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his
aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they
stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This
astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of
survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the
survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Thoughts: It was summer. I remember I was 10 or 11. "Last one to the schoolyard is a rotten egg." I was rollerskating with Howie and Steve...'til my skate came loose. "Ow! Hey! Wait up fellas!"
"Rotten Egg! ha ha!"
"W-wait up."
My father was in front fixing something...
"Artie! Come to hold this a minute while I saw. Why do you cry, Artie. Hold better on the wood."
"I fell and my friends skated away without me"
He stopped sawing. "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, THEN you could see what it is, friends."
And that is the boot to the stomach Maus starts with. From this point, I knew that it would be a book that made you feel like you'd been hit again and again, and I was right.
For me, the brutality of Maus is it's raw honest look at the relationship between a father who has experienced true horrors and a man who is trying to understand and even forgive the effect that had on his childhood. Spiegelman exposed everything in this book about his relationship with his father. The graphic novel does not just recount Vladek's time during World War II, in recounts the interviews and events when Art was interviewinig Vladek about the book.
The power of Maus is not only in it's first hand account of surviving the Holocaust, but an account of how the families of survivors were affected. How the experiences of the Jews during that time coloured their whole life - where fear and distrust became the norm, safety was never guaranteed and try as you might to not let it, it did affect those around you. I became so frustrated with Art and the way he reacted to his father sometimes, but really in the end, the relationship was like so many father/ son or parent/ child relationships. Frustration with the parent over a seemingly inability to move out of (what the child perceives to be) dark ages and into the present. Frustration with the child who refuses to understand why things are important and why you simply cannot throw away anything you no longer want. It's a frustration I experience at times with my own aging parents.
And then there are the accounts of what happened during World War II. By maintaining his father's faulty English, Art portrayed the tone of Vladek so well. I could hear him speak, the accent, the matter-of-factness about his statements.
And we came here to the concentration camp Auschwitz. And we knew that from here we will not come out anymore...We knew the stories - that they will gas us and throw us in the ovens. This was 1944..we knew everything. And here we were.
When I read that I can hear the sadness, but also the acceptance of it. I imagine the fear they felt right at that moment, but in the recount, all I hear is sadness and acceptance. We were here, there was nothing we could do, we knew the outcome.
I've read a fair amount of Holocaust literature - both fiction and non fiction. It is a period of history that haunts and baffles me. This is one of the most powerful pieces I have read on it. The black and white drawings emphasis the darkness the stories, the links back to the present show the ongoing repercussions and the categorising of different races as different animals (Jews were mice, Germans cats, Polish pigs and American's dogs) served to show that humans view each other as different species, rather than as one. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the Holocaust.
I read this as part of my 13 in '13 challenge. I deliberately chose a graphic novel that had some real meat to it. I'm not a comic girl, I'm not interested in the Marvel type graphic novels. This, however, has shown me that there is some wonderful, high quality graphic books out there. I'll be keeping my out for more of this quality.
Challenges: 13 in '13
From Goodreads: Sage Singer befriends an
old man who's particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is
everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike
up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage
for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…and then he confesses
his darkest secret - he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard.
Complicating the matter? Sage's grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.
What
do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who's committed a
truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior?
Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was
wronged? And most of all - if Sage even considers his request - is it
murder, or justice?
Thoughts: To tell you the truth, after the last couple of Picoult's books, I've been tempted to give up on them, but this latest one has gone some way to restoring my faith. In this Picoult seems to be back to her best. I think it's partly because there are no mother issues for me in this one.
Sage Singer is the grand daughter of a holocaust survivor who meets and befriends an elderly man called Josef. AS the friendship continues, he asks Sage to help him die - something he feels he deserves for his role as a soldier in the SS during World War II.
It's hard to discuss this book without giving too much away. Needless to say, if you have been feeling disillusioned with Picoult, this may be worth the read. It is in no way perfect, but it's closer to what I use to feel about her work than I have recently. There is, of course, the trademark twist at the end - in fact there is two - one I picked, one I didn't. I felt the romance between Sage and the man who worked for the Justice Department to track down and prosecute Nazi's (see, I can't even remember his name!) was pointless and added nothing to the story - it was simply there because I story apparently must have a romance. What I am pleased to say is that this surprised me and I will now be more willing to pick up a Picoult book.
