Like a River From its Course

A beautiful character in this book, Baba Mysa, told her granddaughter: War gives us much "to be hurt and angry about, but there are things to love, too."

Like a River From Its Course is a stirring story of WWII seen through the eyes of four people tragically affected by the circumstances, chaos and heartache of war. First, Maria Ivanovna is a young Ukranian girl taken from home along with her sister. She suffers the brutality of the Germans, yet finds not all the enemy are monsters. Ivan Kyrilovich is a father and a good man who suffers for his good actions. Frederick Herrmann is a German soldier, driven to do horrendous things because he wants to please his father. And finally, Luda Michaelevna is another young girl who suffers much at the hands of German soldiers, yet falls in love with one. Four amazing stories - excellently written. Interesting, but none of the four main characters are Jewish, which is a new twist for a book about the Holocaust.

The stories are based on true life stories that the author, Kelli Stuart, researched for 15 years. They  are chilling, upsetting, tragic, but yet inspiring and beautiful.  ~ Reviewed by Patsy Scott

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

Now a popular BBC television series (also available for checkout), Call the Midwife, is Jennifer Worth’s 2002 memoir detailing the time she spent as a midwife in London’s post-war East End district.  Written with empathy and humor, Worth’s account of her time serving the poorest of the poor is both moving and informative.  Following a devastating break-up, young Jennifer commits herself to training and residency, for nursing and midwifery, at the Nonnatus House (a pseudonym) convent in East London. The Nonnatus nuns have a long history of providing medical and social services to the cockney families living in tenements and slums near the Poplar dockyards, and house a number of nurse trainees and midwifery students.  Worth recounts for her readers various experiences she had during that time with her patients and other community members. These recollections range from heart-warming; including the Spanish-born mother who astonished everyone by saving and caring for her 25^th child, born prematurely at 28 weeks, to the despairing; the descriptions of squalor, neglect, and abuse (one neglectful mother left her two toddlers and infant, unsupervised in her filthy tenement apartment with a burning paraffin heater, while she took up trade at the behest of her abusive husband).  Despite the vagaries of life in the slums, nearly all characters are remembered with fondness.  This book would be a good fit for anyone who enjoys historical works or books on British life and customs. I ought to also mention that the audio-book, available for download from the Delphi Public Library via Overdrive, is a delight to hear with the snippets of both posh and cockney dialogue!

-Jennifer Wilson

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Man Booker prize winning novel “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is a masterwork of realistic fiction.  Having read last year’s Booker prize winner, Catton’s “The Luminaries,” and a few reviews of this newest winner on Goodreads, I was prepared to be awed by intimidating prose and literary style, with character and story line appearing as merely well-crafted afterthoughts.  I guess what I’m saying is, I was ready to like this novel in spite of itself.   How fortunate for me that this was not at all the case. 

The novel opens in the near-present with its primary narrator, the aged Dorrigo Evans, a famed surgeon and war hero, musing about his past as he leaves the scene of yet another disappointing marital affair.  Through switchback-style storytelling, the reader learns that Evans grew up in impoverished rural Australia where, as a lover of classical poetry and literature, he earns first a medical degree, and then a rise in social station, via a fortuitous engagement to the daughter of a wealthy family.   Stationed at a coastal base, as a young officer in the Australian military, Dorrigo begins an impassioned affair with his uncle’s young wife shortly before being shipped off to join the allied offensive in the Pacific.    After the surrender of Singapore, Dorrigo, along with his unit, is sent to work as a POW on the famed Thai-Burma Death Railway. It is at this point that the tale takes on new narrative voices as they are introduced.  

The story of Dorrigo and his men, and the story of their Japanese captors, unfolds with breath-taking clarity.  Several times I both longed to, and could not, look away from this novel.  Fans of “Matterhorn,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and “All the Light We Cannot See,” will find Flanagan’s novel more than up to the task of matching and surpassing these novels’ contribution to literary history.

THE ZOOKEEPERS WIFE

By Diane Ackerman.  This book is excellent. Though it does start off slow, I felt, and was at first weighed down with in-depth description of things other than the meat of the story, but by the end, I loved it.

Jan and Antonina Zabinski run a reputable zoo in the Polish capital of Warsaw pre-WW II. Their lives are good and their career of zookeeper fulfilling.  Home is happy where they share their dwelling with a variety of healing zoo animals or zoo animals that have become pets.  I laughed out loud many times with the tales of these typically wild animals living with human beings. It is a unique home, for sure.

 But, WWII comes and the Germans invade Poland. Life at home and at the zoo change drastically for the Zabinskis and their son Rys.  I learned  so much about what the Polish suffered in this war and because of this story, admire and respect them as a beautiful and courageous people.

This is a book about a woman and her bravery. It is a book about her husband and his conviction to duty and helping a people, the Jews, who he loved. As to duty, I like to quote Jan Zabinski's words, "I only did my duty. If you can save someones life, it's your duty to try. We did it because it was the right thing to do." The right thing to do!

If you like animals and history and true stories of the Holocaust, you will like The Zookeeper's Wife. Good read!