Showing posts with label Jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jews. Show all posts
Monday, September 16, 2019
Wunderland / Jennifer Cody Epstein / 367 pages
This is a story of three women, Renate Baur, Ilse von Fisher, and Ilse's daughter Ava. The story is told from Germany in the 1930s and 1940s to the United States in the 1970s to 1989. Ilse and Renate are close childhood friends growing up in Germany in the 1930s when thew Nazis were coming into power. Their friendship is split when it is revealed that Renate's father is Jewish. The girls grow apart as their lives take different paths. The reader follows Ilse as she becomes part of the Nazi youth movement and Renate as she and her family are forced to change how they live with the continuous rules for the Jews from the Nazi party. Ilse and Renate continue to cross paths and there are consequences to each of their lives. Renate is the only member of her family able to get out of Germany when her uncle in the United States sponsors her to immigrate. Fast forward to the end of the war and Ilse is picking up her daughter, Ava, from a German orphanage. The story is told from the perspective of each of the women jumping around in the different time periods. The lives of these three women are intertwined to the very end of the story. For me it was a fascinating book that told a World War II story from different perspectives.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay - 294 Pages
Book Discussion title at Kathryn Linnemann
This is another book that I consider 'book club gold'. There was so much to discuss in this book - many of us had not heard of the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup in France during World War II. Without giving too much away, the book switches back in forth in time from Nazi-occupied France to 2002 (60th anniversary of this incident). Old family secrets and modern domestic issues blend together in a suspenseful, well-told story. If you enjoy World War II fiction, historical fiction, or just an all-around great book, you'll love Sarah's Key.
Our discussion covered everything from the Holocaust to reincarnation. Now how's that for variety?
Happy Reading!
A motion picture based on Sarah's Key was released in 2010, see Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1668200/
Discussion questions available from Reading Group Guides at: http://www.readinggroupguides.
A motion picture based on Sarah's Key was released in 2010, see Internet Movie Database at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1668200/
Discussion questions available from Reading Group Guides at: http://www.readinggroupguides.
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