Tag: holocaust survivors

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

Three Muses

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Martha Anne Toll

Three Muses is a love story that enthralls: a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet. In post-WWII New York, John Curtin suffers lasting damage from having been forced to sing for the concentration camp kommandant who murdered his family. John trains to be a psychiatrist, struggling to wrest his life from his terror of music and his past. Katya Symanova climbs the arduous path to Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet, becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship with her choreographer, who makes Katya a star but controls her life. When John receives a ticket to attend a ballet featuring Katya Symanova, a spell is cast. As John and Katya follow circuitous paths to one another, fear and promise rise in equal measure. Song, Discipline, and Memory weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph

NOTE: Thank you to Netgalley and Regal House Publishing for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. This review may contain spoilers. 

Three Muses takes you on a journey through time. It’s also a journey through the lives of Katya Symanova and John Curtin, both broken, both haunted, seeking to find their place and purpose in their worlds. 

This book starts out as two separate stories. We meet Janko, later known as John, a small boy given up by his mother to the Nazis hoping his talent for singing saves his life. As he sings for those who killed his family, a chasm forms deep in his heart separating him from his love for song. Upon rescue, he travels to America where he is placed in the care of a family who recently lost their son in the war. They become his replacement family and he becomes their replacement son. He adopts the name of John Curtin and becomes a psychiatrist. 

John was my favorite character in this story. I loved how his first patient really was himself. He’s shy and courageous and respectful and so kind and he’s all these things while dealing with PTSD from WWII. I love how we get to see his transition from a scared little boy to a young man trying to please his new American family and finally, into an adult. John struggles to understand the meaning of love in all its selfless facets until he meets Katya, who helps him understand that to love is to sacrifice. 

The other story is Katherine Sillman who is gifted with ballet lessons after her mother’s death. As she grows into a proper ballerina, she catches the eye of the choreographer/composer, Boris Yanakov, who changes her name to Katya Symannova, putting the curtain up between her and everyone else in her life but him. As he grooms her, she becomes entranced with him and by him. 

Katya is probably my least favorite character in this story. While we do see a beautiful character arc and wonderful development, I cringe at the idea of any woman losing herself in a man to the degree Katya did. She allowed him to rob her of everything, her friends, her family (in a way) and finally, her relationship with John. He literally chains her to him for the duration of her life. It was sad to me to see her disregard warnings from her friend, Maya, and completely forget she even had a father. She only remembers him when he gets hurt and needs help. 

I also found her to be a little self-serving in her relationship with John. He said she gave him a lot when he said she gave him back his Papa. However, I can’t really see where she gave more than he did. The deception of it all was upsetting also in light of her relationship with Boris. John was too sweet to hurt that way. 

I will always always love when authors take their time telling a story. It’s a gift to be able to do this without making the book too long or causing it to lag in places. I didn’t have any fault with the pace of this book. It picks you up and takes you on this lovely, very visual, highly emotional yet gentle ride. I felt all the feels. And the language, the imagery was simply stunning. 

I loved how the two stories converged and then disconnected with only the very smallest tether left at the end. Wonderfully written. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Woman with the Blue Star

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Pam Jenoff

1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.

Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Scorned by her friends and longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.

Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by harrowing true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an emotional testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.

“The triumph of the human spirit”

I’ve fallen in love with historical fiction stories. I’m not sure why but there’s a certain vibrancy of human spirit on display in these stories. Pam Jenoff doesn’t miss a beat telling this story based on real life history of holocaust survivors. There’s something about these stories that fascinate me and break me. I know my own cowardice enough to know had I lived back then, I would have been neither brave nor selfless so it always astounds me to read about what folks survived and how they managed. 

Sadie and her family are forced to live in the sewer at the beginning at the story and that’s pretty much where she stays the whole time. While her surroundings don’t change, her circumstances so and it all changes her from a young girl to a brave young woman. She loses people she loves and does her best to stay alive as well as find a way of escape for her family and others with her. 

Elsa is a Polish girl. She has a warm bed, water and enough food but living in a home her late father shared with her stepmother brings its own challenges. For one, her stepmother has an affinity for German soldiers and entertains them frequently. She is abusive and degrading and often reminds Elsa she is not wanted. 

Elsa sees Sadie through the sewer grate and the two become entwined in each other’s lives. Elsa risks much to bring Sadie and those living with her food while Sadie does her best to try to figure out what their next move is going to be. 

As deplorable as Sadie’s conditions are, I love the growth we see in her. I don’t find her to be a spoiled character in the beginning but losing her father early on and taking on the strength of her mother, we see a beautiful woman emerging. She doesn’t take anything for granted (how could she) and yet, is willing to risk much to free them all from living in the sewer. 

Elsa also is another unspoiled character and yet we see her world grow from just herself and her harsh existence with a stepmother who hates her to a much bigger world, helping Sadie and coming to terms with her “lavish” lifestyle. She uses her blessings to be a blessing and that made me completely love her. 

The strength of the human spirit cannot be denied here. By the end of the book, when we discover what happened with both women and how they both fared, I was truly touched. This is a very moving story full of heart and hope. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: