Happy New Year!
As we greet a new year, I look at a book that reflects on the past.
This book is Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. It should not be confused with Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James.
Sepetys’ beautiful novel features Lina Vilkas, a fifteen year girl from Lithuania who is deported with her mother and younger brother to Siberia under Stalin’s regime. Lina is an artist and secretly draws portraits of everyone around her and writes descriptions of everything that happens. She hopes that these pictures will somehow reach her father who was separated from his family.
On the back of my copy of the book is a review by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, the Newberry Honor-winning author of Hitler Youth. She writes that she feels grateful “for a writer… who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression.”
Bartoletti’s review is incredibly apt as when the year “1941” is spoken or read, people think of the Holocaust and Hitler. Typically, they do not think of Stalin. And if they do think of him, he is somehow separated from Hitler in their minds. I get this because I do it too. And there aren’t many, if any, survival stories. Unlike the Holocaust. It is quite clear in the book, however, that these two events are happening at the same time because every once in a while, someone will mention news about the ghettos, the concentration camps, or the progress of the war.
Even though this book is a work of fiction, I believe that it is quite good at capturing the despair, the chaos, and the dehumanizing nature of the situation. This is possible because fiction, I believe, always holds a glimmer, or perhaps a whole sun, of truth. It also captures the random and uplifting moments of humor and joy that always seem to pervade throughout dark times.
The style of Septys’ writing is simple and clear. It does not make the horrific events, like shooting a young mother because she was grieving over her dead newborn, more or less dramatic. They just simply happen. Like most novels, it has chapters. They are shorter than your average chapters and sometimes break up the narrative. This clearly has not disrupted me because I have had a hard time putting it down, even when it is midnight and I know I have work in just a few hours.
While reading it, a quote from another book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, popped into my head: “I am haunted by humans.” I, a human, find myself thinking I am haunted by humans because of the events portrayed in Between Fifty Shades of Gray. I am haunted by their ability to do evil. I am haunted by their ability to be good and kind amongst all odds like Lina’s mother is. But mostly I am haunted by their ability to love and survive when hopelessness abounds.