For those of you who want me to get to the core of the apple, I will say this to you: go buy this book and read it. It is worth your time and you will be better for reading it when you are done. One warning: this book is about Nazi Germany. It is graphic in places and it will make you mad (or at least it should). It is not an easy read, nor should it be tossed in your beach bag. This book is heavy, it is deep, and it will move you (or it should). I was physically exhausted when I finished reading last night. I am getting tired thinking about all that I have to say about this brilliant novel. In all seriousness, I bought a set of magnetic bookmarks a few weeks ago and was excited that there were cute little cupcakes on one side and arrows on the other so that if you needed to mark your page or mark a quotation you wanted to remember, you could. I used all 8 of them while reading this book. My family laughed at me as I carried around a totally bookmarked book for two weeks. It seems, then, that this blog entry will be, in part, a recollection of those quotes and ideas that I marked. This novel is filled with powerful words and it touched my heart because, as with other favorites of mine that came before, this book is about the power of words. Words can entertain you, but words can be powerful enough to save your life. Just ask Minka.
Back when I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I mentioned that I wished that I had read it as part of a class in college, so that I could gleam every tiny nugget of gold out of the story, as only teachers of English can do. I feel the same way about The Storyteller. I would love to hear an English teacher's take on the storyline and the characters. But, I guess you all will have to settle on a Kindergarten Teacher's take, but one who majored in English, so perhaps I won't be too far off. Although I am leaving a lot out as to not be a spoiler.
The Storyteller opens with an excerpt from a story that is written in italics. Anyone who has read Picoult before knows that she often alternates between characters from one chapter to the next and will signal this change through a font change. It was not until much later in the book, however, that I finally figured out that the italicized sections with no title were sections from Sage's grandmother's (Minka) book. Once I figured that out, the story became even more brilliant to me. It was also then that the light bulb truly went on and I figured out that Minka was The Storyteller. I think.
Until that point, what I knew was this: the main character is Sage. She is a brilliant baker with a scar that covers a good portion of her face. She does not share how she got this scar until later in the story, but she spends her days sleeping and her nights baking so that she can avoid contact with people. She prefers to be alone, is sleeping with a married man, and is a bundle of anxiety. Then she meets Josef in her grief group (she has lost both of her parents) and the two become good friends. He is in his nineties; she in her early twenties. Josef finally confides in her that he was a Nazi officer and he wants her to help him die. Sage, an atheist raised in the Jewish faith, finds Josef's story unsettling and contacts the Department of Justice. Now, the story really begins. And it quickly evolves into Sage's and Leo's (the DOJ lawyer assigned to the case) attempts to uncover the truth behind Josef's claims.
The Storyteller is divided into three sections. The first is basically what I described above but it also includes Josef's story as an officer at Auschwitz. The second section is Minka's story as a girl living at a time when it was not safe to be Jewish, as a girl who was ultimately separated from her family, and as a girl trying to survive in Auschwitz. The third section of the book is when everything comes together and where the story eventually ends. I will let you read this on your own and won't spoil it for you.
I have to admit that I went into reading this book having a purely historical opinion of concentration camps. I knew very few, if any, personal stories about the people who were impacted by concentration camps. I have never been to the Holocaust museum, but knew enough to know that the people suffered and that Nazis were bad people. Honestly, I never took a single History class in all of my years of school that taught anything past WW1. So the idea of Sage trying to implicate a 95 year old man made me scratch my head a little. Why would she bother? He is old. He has lived his entire life regretting his actions and feeling horrible about the people he killed. Why not let him live out his days continuing to torture himself with his regrets? But I quickly felt her anger when I read his
words, his story. I wanted to help him die. If Sage wouldn't do it, I was ready to volunteer.
Then when I read Minka's story, I became even angrier, tears fell on the pages as I devoured every word of her story, not being able to turn the pages fast enough, but throwing the book across my bed at one point because I was so angry at the life Minka had to live. It was so unfair and so cruel. I suddenly felt guilty for being alive, for having a life that was so easy compared to hers.
I don't want to tell you anymore about the plot of this book. I'll let Part Three unravel as it will. But, I want to indulge myself and my bookmarks a bit. It would've been easier to read this sort of book on my Nook, which I don't actually have anymore now that I have my iPad, but bookmarking important passages is certainly an easier thing to do with some sort of e-reader. And, I'd have the passages bookmarked forever. Oh well. It is what it is.
On page 18, I read the first line that made me smile, and probably the last line that made me smile, "It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself." Me too, Sage. Me too.
Then, on page 124, I began to understand Josef's dilemma and his request of Sage. "When your existence is hell, death must be heaven." Perhaps it also explains why some of the men and women in Auschwitz did not fear death. Sadly, I bet this is true of battered women, people who battle illness, and probably even more instances in modern day life than I can think of right now. It makes me sad to think of people who live every day wishing it was their last because their life is so hellish. Life should not be that way for anyone.
Page 139 reminded me of my own personal religious dilemma: "No child really chooses his religion; it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in." How do we know that what we are taught is what's right? Or, do we blindly believe what our parents believe must because they are our parents? I imagine this is why so many children grow up to be like Sage and abandon the religion of their parents. Or, you end up like me, still struggling at age 40 to figure out what it is that I do believe. I guess this is why, on page 187, the ideal that I have tried to uphold throughout my life (note I said "tried") was verbalized and I felt vindicated: "Morality has nothing to do with religion. You can do the right thing and not believe in God at all." Amen.
Page 230 reminded me of my past. "The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it." This was spoken of hunger, but as Minka so wisely noted, power, revenge, and love are all just different versions of hunger. We are all hungry for something at some point in our lives.
This book is called The Storyteller. As I mentioned before, what became clear to me after Part One is that Minka is the storyteller. Her story saved her life. I"ll let you read the book to find out what is meant by this. But there's more than one story being told in this novel. We hear Josef's story, Sage's story, even Leo's story. Words are powerful. Here's why, as so explained on page 300, "Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora's box, a story that's freely given can't be contained anymore. It becomes infectious, spreading from the person who created it to the person who listens, and passes it on." Minka's story was infectious, but so was Josef's. Words captivate, they allow us to escape, they inspire. They are powerful enough to save your life, or to ruin it.
Finally, the last quotation I want to mention here is one we all can benefit from pondering. It's about forgiveness, which I'd imagine we all have needed to give or have asked for at some point in our lives. The Storyteller is a story about forgiveness. Josef wants it desperately and Sage struggles to provide it until her friend Mary reminds her that, "He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you." Forgiveness. Easier said than done. But why spend your entire life hating someone or something? Imagine all of the time you'll get back by just forgiving. And then moving on.
I'm not sure how this novel will rank for me at the end of the year when it's time to formulate my top ten list. I'm not sure this story was life changing, although I feel like I learned something about history through this fictional story (ironic?) and have been made more aware of a time in history that, I have to be honest, I don't know much about. It makes me feel sad that people we treated so cruelly because of their religion. It makes me sad that others so blindly followed cruelty. It makes me sad that they lived a life of shame. It all just makes me sad. The end of the book is filled with sadness, too. I was hoping for something happy to make up for the tears and tears I cried while reading this book. But, the end just heaped more sadness onto my overflowing plate. There was a plot twist I never saw coming, and it happened right at the very end. And I cried more.
The Storyteller is a long book. 460 pages of intense reading. As I said before, don't throw this one in your beach bag for spring break, and don't use this book to reward yourself for reading some other hard to read book. This one is tough. But, then again, most things that are worthwhile in life usually are.
Happy reading,
:) Dodie
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