Between Shades Of Gray [Kindle Edition]

We have all read many books telling the horrific story of the suffering inflicted on the Jewish population during WW2, but I wonder how many of us know anything about the millions of innocents murdered on the orders of Stalin. It is certainly something I was only dimly aware of. I know more now. This brilliant new book follows the life of a 15 year old Lithuanian girl, who, along with the rest of her family, is arrested and sent to Siberia following the Russian occupation of her country. They are taken from their warm, comfortable home, transported huge distances in lorries and railway trucks and then made to work on the land in freezing conditions, while receiving little food and sheltering in poorly contructed hovels. It is a bleak and tragic tale, but in the midst of such suffering there are astonishing acts of human kindness, friendships are born and even love manages to blossom. An amazing book. Read it!

Lina Vilkas is an ordinary teenage girl living in Lithuania, and her favourite means of expression is drawing; she is a keen artist and admires the artist Edvard Munch. As the novel opens she is sitting writing to her cousin Joana, when in the space of a moment, her life suddenly changes forever. Lithuania and the other Baltic States had fallen under Soviet occupation, and one day in June 1941, Lina, together with her mother Elena and her little brother Jonas, is dragged from her home by Soviet secret police with just a hastily packed suitcase, and taken on a long horrific journey with many others, squashed into train carts like cattle, across Russia to a labour camp in Siberia. Thrown together like this, people forge friendships in the struggle to get by, some more surprising and unlikely than others. Throughout this tortuous ordeal, Lina draws whenever she can, and using whatever makeshift equipment for paper and brushes, but she is determined to try and record the people and places and events, in desperate hope of them somehow reaching her father one day; his whereabouts are unknown to the rest of the family when they are taken.

This is an epic tale of sadness, hardship, and endurance, told from the viewpoint of a young girl with a strong will to survive, and there is such a strength of spirit and determination in the face of the cruelty they suffer. It doesn't seem appropriate to say I `enjoyed' this novel, but it is well-written, very convincingly from Lina's point of view, and tells of an aspect of World War Two that I knew little about, having read much less about region and what happened, than novels featuring Germany, England and France during this period.

The author is the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee and she lives in the USA, and she wanted to tell this story so that more people would be aware of all those from the Baltic states who lost their lives in Stalin's purges, as even those who survived many years in Siberia and returned to live in Lithuania and the other countries were unable to speak of what happened to them for so long as they were still living under Soviet rule until 1991. She has based some of the events on real first-hand accounts from survivors.

I certainly learned from this poignant novel and am glad so many will read this about know a little about what happened. I loved the ending to the story and what Lina had done.

This book turned me into a bit of a mess, I have not cried this much since I first saw Atonement, which is saying a lot because that movie made me literally sob for about an hour. For a few days after reading this book (and if I am honest as I am writing this review) just thinking about it made me misty eyed.

It feels almost wrong to say that I loved this book given what it is about, but I did, I loved it. It is a beautiful book that has been stunningly written. It is instantly gripping, utterly heart-breaking and extremely powerful.

It is easy to go overboard with books about this subject and go too far, it is also easy to tread too lightly and not write what really happened for fear of offending and upsetting people. Sepetys gets it just right for her target audience in this, she has treated this subject with the respect it deserves whilst managing to write characters that make me laugh and cry and who you hate and love.

I loved Lina, I loved how she grew, how she found her strength and resolve. She was not always likeable, she was not perfect, she sometimes said and did the wrong thing, but in her situation who wouldn't.

All of the characters were wonderfully developed with individual personalities and ticks, but none really compared to Lina's mother, who was a triumph. I adored her and have no idea how she handled herself with such dignity, courage and grace during this book. Her compassion and care not just for her children but for all those around her was inspiring and genuinely touching. She is the best YA parent I think I have ever come across.

Even now I have tears in my eyes, why? I think it is because I am angry. I am a 27 year old Englishwoman, who had to sit through hour after hour of history classes as I was growing up, and not once in all those hours was this subject bought up. Hundreds and hundreds of not only Lithuanians but other former soviet citizens died and suffered for years at the hands of Stalin and I never knew, and my mother never new, or my father, my best friend or my boss. Somehow these people's stories have gone missing from the pages of history, so please, please read this book and make your mother read it, and your father, your best friend and your boss.

Between Shades of Gray is a book I will never forget, it was deeply moving and majestically written. It wasn't perfect I didn't like the ending and felt it was rushed, but it doesn't matter to me. Anything that can have this kind of effect on me deserves 5 stars.