Reviewed by Mr Llewellyn-Evans
This is a delightfully written and simple story about memory told from the perspective of 11-year-old Jeska. As Jeska finds out through the course of this short novel not all memories are pleasant as her father explains:
“If you cut yourself badly, you can be left with a scar, even when the wounds healed. It can be the same when you experience terrible hardship: the memory of it becomes a scar”.
So, this is a story of Jeska’s discovery of her mother’s scar and an explanation of why her mother behaves the way she does. The dark room, the insistence on quiet in the house, the need to make yourself small and not draw attention to yourself.
Set in the Netherlands during the late 1960’s Jeska is a bright girl who sometimes takes to day dreaming, but during the course of the novel comes to realise a significant event impacted her mother, World War II and the treatment of the Jews in Holland. It is also a novel about guilt, the guilt her mother feels as being the only survivor of her family.
This is a different type of holocaust novel and one worth reading alongside say Morris Geitzman’s Once series.
4.5/5 stars