Book Review #17 - Between Shades of Gray

I officially have fifty books that I have read since I first started reviewing books that have not been reviewed.  Fifty.  Obviously, most of those are from last year when I was pregnant and barely functioning but I have twelve that I've read this year and not reviewed.  That's a lot!  I'm behind and I hate feeling behind but I don't want to give up.  I learned from last year's hiatus that I forget the books I don't review.  There are many books on that list of fifty I can barely remember reading.  I always struggle to remember specifics like character names, dates and places but most of the time, if I take the time to sit and write a review, that book and what I felt while reading stays with me.  I have enjoyed that experience so much.

So, today, I'm going to write one.  There are lots of other blog posts I should spend my time on as I'm sure I'll care more about the memories of these events than what I thought about a book but I'm hoping my little act of blog defiance will keep me in the book review game.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but I am a big fan, huge, of well titled books.  I love it when there are layered meanings or a play on words or it contains a reference to something traditional, familiar or reverent.  Possibly because this title is so unfortunately similar to another currently popular but less chaste book, I was very motivated to learn the meaning of its title, Between Shades of Gray.  Until the very end of the book, and I mean very end (like author's notes), I still hadn't gotten it.  The protagonist, a fifteen year old opinionated and perceptive girl named Lina, is an artist and the book is filled with abundant references to her drawing, sketching, and tracing the events of her and her family's struggle to survive as declared enemies to the Soviet Union.  As part of the book takes place in Siberia in the snow, I thought it must have something to do with the mixture of pencil lead or charcoal and the snow.  You know...gray art.  Clues, perhaps, that led to their deliverance or a description of their lost testament of a brutal and forgotten history.  The cover picture with snow on an eyelash supported that theory.

As the story progressed and their conditions became more severe, I grimly thought that the author was  making a morbid reference to the characters' skin tones as they became sicker and sicker from malnutrition, exhaustion and disease.  Or, less grotesque, there was an early description of Lina wearing a pretty grey dress during a happier time that brought out the color of her eyes that I reasoned might have been mentioned to foreshadow another shade of gray later on creating a contrast of the two time periods.  

Between Shades of Gray is a book about what happened to the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Finns during Stalin's rule.  As the author, Ruta Sepetys, predicted, I had little knowledge of the specific sufferings felt by these exiled people.  Caught between Hitler advancing armies in 1941 and the Soviet Union's own expanding empire, the citizens of these small countries were without allies or voice and their stories were left largely untold until their re-independence in the 1990s.  Sepetys was correct in assuming that their stories of survival, heartache, despair and love need to be told.  I'm grateful she has given a voice to these histories and glad that her book is doing well, even better because of a similarly titled book.

I did have my disappointments.  By far the largest disappointment was needing to be told the point of the title.  I'm not going to give it away here, but should any of my above theories as to the meaning of the title show up on some kind of multiple choice exam in the future, choose D: none of the above. When the author revealed what she meant by "Between Shades of Gray," I wasn't wowed.  In fact, I was a little more like, "Well...obviously."  That is true of all history and every story.  It bugged me that she felt like she was making this breakthrough announcement.   I also have to mention that the writing is quite juvenile with short simple sentences and a lot of guiding and telling how the characters felt. While her characters do feel genuine and there is a satisfying variety in their responses to depravity, they are mostly boxed into one identifying emotion.  A few of the main characters were allowed more than one but the additional responses were often related. Lina was angry but determined.  Her mother was kind and  generous.  The bald man was mean and scared.

Nevertheless, this is a good book.  It exposes important morality that forces thought and judgment.  How do some survive the very worst kinds of suffering?  How would I choose to be in a situation like this?  Why is the world so cruel sometimes?

Knowing that most of the situations throughout her novel are based on memories of real life survivors, any writing flaw or deficiency easily takes a back seat to its truth.  More than that, the take away message of love and hope overpowering despair and darkness is a message I hope all will be motivated to read.  Recommended!