A shimmeringly delicate invention. Cool and spare, the third-person narrative zigzags through time, accumulating authenticity and power. It is hard to stop reading ... Cunning.
Deeply upsetting in places, particularly when we hear of the brutal exploits of camp commander Rudolf Höss and his equally sadistic henchmen. Tuck deserves credit for not softening the blows and diluting the atrocities ... The nonlinear narrative darts backward and forward, and routinely fragments into a series of vignettes comprising meditations, profiles and potted histories, many of which chronicle the tragic plights of other characters ... Could have been a crude drama, fashioned from a stolen identity. Instead, Tuck has sensitively and skillfully created a memorial to a life cut short while shining necessary light on the darkest chapter of the 20th century.
The challenge is that when the facts are so heavy, any attempt to fictionalize them, to enter imaginatively into the lives of people living through things that are unimaginable, can feel like a violation. Yet without access to imaginative sympathies, what’s the point of writing a novel about them? Tuck’s solution is to furnish Czeslawa’s life as sparsely as possible ... It’s a deeply impressive achievement from a wonderful writer and loses none of its power from the fact that the ground has been well covered.
Tuck intersperses Czeslawa’s haunting narrative with varied historical accounts and figures, holding a resolute eye on the atrocities of the time and the lives cut short.
Haunting ... Extensively annotated and researched, Tuck’s brief novel returns, time and time again, to the subject of memories, a theme alluded to in an epigraph consisting of a fragment of a Louise Glück poem. The author's skillful blending of facts and fiction reanimates the memory of one of the countless lost children of the Holocaust. A painful, essential, unflinching memento.
Unflinching ... With graphic imagery and lyrical prose, Tuck vividly evokes Czeslawa’s innocence and resilience, as she tries to hold out hope by imagining Anton in Auschwitz with her. It’s an unforgettable portrait of buoyant youth in the grimmest of places.
