Great book. Touching, haunting, and lovely all at the same time. It's a book about a Jewish village that chooses to hide from the world during the Holocaust and then the consequences that follow. There are contrasting themes of life and death, hope and despair, love and hate, action and inaction, bravery and cowardly behaviors, and so much sadness, but also happiness, faith, and life. There are moments while reading where you feel as if you are experiencing a very private moment with the narrator exposed and feeling her raw need for her family and stability in her life. It really made me think about some of the things the Jews went through during the Holocaust. No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel not only bypassed my editor brain, but also touched me deeply.The story opens in Eastern Europe in 1939, but this is not just another book about the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we use those stories to tell us who we are. It’s about isolation from the world into a hidden, perfect constructed reality, and then the shock of re-entry when that construct inevitably cracks and lets the real world in.In that, it evokes A Turn of Light by Julie Czerneda, or Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (a novel brutal and beautiful in equal measure) — minus bears and plus Jews. And I don’t mean for that to sound flippant. The first couple chapters, in which a small and remote village decides to renounce the war-torn world and start again anew, are undoubtedly the most emotionally resonant depiction I’ve ever seen of what it means to be Jewish.No One is Here… is not a fantasy, but the prose is so dreamlike and the plot so improbable that at times it almost feels like one. Some suspension of disbelief is required, but accepting the improbable bits at face value is necessary. If you are willing to join the narrator and become a complicit partner in her lie, the narrative unfolds to involve you in a much deeper exploration of identity, hope, community, and faith.
Do You like book Il Sole Ci Verrà A Cercare (2012)?
Very strange book-I will give it a star for creativity. Fable like, but I wasn't getting the moral.
—Megen
An intricately woven tale where fantasy meets reality.
—rian888
