TAYSHAS 2019 #8

What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper

I read this one because it came highly recommended by my school librarian... not necessarily a recommendation for me, but for a coworker. Whatever.

This is a novel set during the Holocaust. In Germany. Of course, I wanted to read it because Holocaust novels are generally, in my experience, interesting. This was interesting, but not on par with Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl or Elie Wiesel's Night. Perhaps this is because this is entirely fiction based on real events, written by someone who didn't experience the Holocaust first hand. Again, it wasn't badly written in any way, it just didn't resonate quite the same way that those nonfiction books did.

When the book starts, Gerta is sixteen. She is comforting the woman in the bunk with her at the Bergen Belsen camp. Her bunkmate dies in her arms, and literally minutes later, the camp is liberated by the British. During the liberation, Gerta is removed from her barrack and placed on the ground with a young man named Lev. Thus begins a friendship between the two.

There are some flashbacks to Gerta's growing up and capture. She did not know she was Jewish, as her father and stepmother had some forged documents to show she was Aryan. For the longest time, Gerta thought it was her stepmother who turned her and her father in.

At one point, another young man, Michah, shows up at the camp. He, as it turns out, is the son of Gerta's bunkmate who died. Gerta has a bit of a crush on him, but he turns out to be a player. Meanwhile, Lev has a giant crush on Gerta. He even asks her to marry him.

One underlying thing over the whole book is the role music plays in Gerta's life. She was in training for the opera, and plays the viola because her father was a violist. Music is what kept her from the ovens in the camps, and music is what kept her going.

Again, this wasn't a badly written book, but it did lack something that I can't quite put my finger on.