4 Stars
I did not look good after I finished 'Between shades of gray'. My nose could have passed as the red nosed reindeer. It had become an awful shade of red from the sobbing. Similar to my close friend, I’m frankly not a big fan of books that will give me a headache from the crying that I have to withstand, coincidentally one my favourite genre is historical-fiction and history has a lot of grieve. Too much. I hate to cry and I prefer to sit silently and concentrate on a blank wall or an object, so tears do not spill out. But I failed to do so for this book. The first and second part of this book had strangely no effect on my emotions, but the third section of the book really warmed me up to the human compassion people were able to display, in a time of disaster.
Between shades of grey is different from other WWII books, because it does not focus on an event that is widely known by the world, but the one that has been overlooked quite some time by history as inconsequential.
The Baltic countries beside Russia such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland also suffered greatly in WWII. Between shades of gray captures the hardship one of the Baltic counties had to go through.
Lina’s life in Lithuania was on the right track until abruptly her life spirals out of control. She finds herself and her family torn apart from their old life by the Soviets NKVD, and forced to work in the hard conditions of Siberia. Everyday becomes a struggle to survive. Starvation and illness becomes a regular visitor in Lina’s life. Hope to make it out alive along with her entire family and finally reach home is Lina’s only will to try and survive.
The Book was spilt into three sections. Each was a new journey of survival that Lina and the individuals of the Baltic countries had to undergo. Each step of the new journey brought them closer to home as they continued to endure and live, but in the third section it felt as if suddenly survival turned out to be an unrealistic truth.
“I planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all.”
The writing was nothing special. The sentences were simple to get to a certain point faster and for the story not to drag on. Some characters did lack development. Truthfully, some characters felt as if they were merely forced into the book to convey or force the reader to feel an emotion. For instance the woman and the baby who were thrust into the dirty car were really there to invoke the reader to feel very deep hatred towards the Soviet NKVD. For me at first I felt as if that was forced on me too quickly and therefore it was irritating. But Besides that, the book does a good job in helping the reader connect with Lina.
Between shades of grey is a story primarily meant to be about hope, but yet again I feel as if it was a way for the author to express how unfair, that history never truly remembers the pain that the Baltic countries had to endure during war and even after. It is very unfair. I truly didn’t even know that labour camps - similar to concentrations camps set by Nazi Germany to execute the Jews, were also set up by the Russians to punish the people of the Baltic countries. I've never even heard a single person discuss the particular topic.
Either way
History is both an interesting and a cruel subject of the human past.
I’m not entirely sure everyone will like this novel, but I do strongly recommend it.
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