Trigger warnings: child mutilation, graphic murder, dismemberment, torture, grievous and graphic depictions of wounds, profanity, graphic descriptions of nudity (including children), graphic depictions of childbirth, gas chambers, mass cremations, talk of rape in general, rape of a child shown on page.
In the last few months of the Nazi’s occupation of Poland, two children are abandoned by their father and stepmother to increase the chances of all of them surviving. Left to find safety in the dense Bialowieza Forest, the two, renamed “Hansel” and “Gretel” in an effort to disguise their Jewishness, wander until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called “witch” by the nearby villagers due to her herbal knowledge and assistance in ridding women of unwanted pregnancies. Magda, along with her great-niece Nekla and Nekla’s beau the woodsman Telek, are determined to protect them as long as possible, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children.
I finished this book and I still don’t know what I thought about it. It was one of the most incredibly bleak and depressing books I’ve read in awhile, which seeing as it’s set at the tail end of the Holocaust was to be expected, but still. I did find it an interesting literary decision to never state what “The Mechanik” (the children’s father), “The White Wolf” (the children’s stepmother), “the Russian”, “Hansel”, or “Gretel” were actually originally called. As you can tell from the trigger warning above, this book in no way shies away from showing the ugly side of war; I do know one emotion this book aroused in my was severe discomfort.
Everyone in it was realistically written, I will say that. Most of the villagers were split between having given up completely, and wanting to resist as long they didn’t have to either put themselves in trouble or get their hands dirty. The Nazis were either one-note villains though, or the little decency they had was tied up with their own beliefs on “proper warfare” and not any actual human decency. Out of all of them, Telek, Magda, Nekla and Gretel tied, in that order, were my favorites. Hansel, six year old that I know he is, spent the majority of the book annoying the heck out of me. Frequently there wasn’t a bad situation he couldn’t make at least 80% worse. Gretel I felt that way about for a small part of the book, but there is a really good reason why she starts acting the way she does. And you do get some swell name dropping, if Birkenau and Goring are your idea of a good time.
If you want a really bleak, not the least bit uplifting modern variation on the Hansel and Gretel myth set in a little covered part of World War II history (what Germany did to Poland) then pick up this book. This is one variation of a fairy tale that Cosbrarian could not touch with a ten-foot pole, because there is no way to unf*ck up this one; it must stay f*cked up. And that’s about as positive as I can get about it.
As I said, I finished reading it not knowing what I thought about it, and that was four days ago. I still haven’t figured it out.