And the Rat Laughed

by Nava Semel, Miriam Shlesinger (Translator)

And the Rat Laughed is a unique book. Unlike other Holocaust-related books that focus on the historical horrific events, this novel deals with the act of remembering them. It resembles a relay race in which the characters transfer memory from one another, while travelling on the axis of time.
The book begins in the last day of 1999, when a survivor Grandmother in Tel Aviv shares her tragic life story as a hidden child in a pit, with only a rat for company with her granddaughter. The day after – 2000 already – the granddaughter tells the legend of "Girl and Rat" to her teacher and in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. In 2099 a future anthropologist discovers it and tries to uncover its mysterious roots. In her research, she reveals the first man who created this myth in the past. Father Stanislaw, a Catholic priest, saved that little Jewish girl (who later became the Grandmother in Tel Aviv) and returned her after the war to her Jewish people. In his personal journal he documented everything, to make sure the world will never forget.
The chain of remembearers, therefore, moves from the present to the future and back to the past. The novel is written in 5 genres: story, legend, poems, science fiction and diary, creating a cycle of 150 years.
And the Rat Laughed (/i>was acclaimed for its use of unconventional and original literary devices and became a ground breaker for exploring the act of memory itself. How do we tell our painful story? Does it change while we recall it? How will our next recipient recall it in his own individual way? Is Art the only corridor to transfer emotional memory?

Genres: Fiction, Holocaust, War, Historical Fiction, Mira, Israel

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have made several attempts to write a review of this very interesting story. Interesting? Story? Are they the right words for a read on that most emotive of subjects, the Holocaust? I have read far too much about that subject and had been burnt out by it to be honest. Mankind’s inhumanity to each other never ceases to amaze. At this point in my life I look for peaceful reading but seemingly fail. Peaceful? Do I read for peace? For pleasure? The challenge of the subject? As I finished the amazing final chapter, I began questioning why I read, let alone question the inhumanity of mankind and its ability to remember and to forget. Why read of this subject? To remember?

And that is what to me makes this conceptually outstanding. In terms of the thematic use of religion, memory and cumulative error, I am very vaguely reminded of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr, a religious tale of cumulative error. The Goodreads blurb calls And The Rat Laughed “a unique book” and I do tend to agree. The Science Fiction element is that part that makes this as unique as anything I recall reading in terms of Holocaust fiction.

But reader beware, And the Rat Laughed takes very careful reading. There are five chapters, and I had myself rereading the first two, such was their importance to the Sci Fi element that came later. Even then, I knew that I had missed references to both the past and the future. The absolutely sublime last chapter has had me knowing that I will read And The Rat Laughed again.

The following quotes are passages from the first chapter, a chapter that tells the story of an ageing Grandmother as she tries to recall her horrific childhood to her school age granddaughter, who is required to talk to a holocaust survivor for a school project.
“…It’s not one of those stories that audiences love.”
As to the grandmother, “As far as she’s concerned, the story isn’t that important to her, and at this late date it doesn’t seem to be important to anyone else either. There are many others like this story, including some that have already been told. She doesn’t think that hers is any more worthy. On the contrary, she’s convinced that the story will resist her, will become incoherent, and in an effort to disguise its own ugliness will turn into something completely different. And yet, she is the only one who can tell it. If not all of it or most of it, then at least some parts. A strange sense of urgency overtakes her. Maybe it’s old age. She cannot afford to let the story disappear as if it never happened.”
“Because once she lets go of it, it will be told differently. People will add things, leave things out, twist it out of shape. And all she has to go by is her own version, her own inadequate best. Deliberately, cautiously, the old woman will pry out spikes from the body of her story, hoping for it.”
And that’s the premise of And the Rat Laughed.

The granddaughter can hardly explain and or be witness as to what her grandmother tells her. Her ordeal was as a child, which as an old lady she can hardly articulate those suppressed five-year-old memories of herself. The Granddaughter can do nothing but surmise and with that she and her fellow school friends create an internet poetry site called “girl&rat.com”

From there, a cult occurs that turns the holocaust memories of the grandmother into a commercial enterprise of pop song and Disney. I would suggest that our modern world of commercialisation of just about every tenet of human existence may also be thematic to the story told.
As a species, we soon forget, and quite fast at times. When we don’t memory can become cumulative and that is the very point of The Dream, the sci fi chapter. Even after an archeologically discovery of diaries of the priest that saved the little girl, the future narrator is considering Holocaust denial among others things. After this chapter, we are presented with the actual diary of the priest. I was profoundly moved by his questioning of his faith, his disgust at the congregation he serves, his own personal torment. This was a moving end to an exceptional book.

[Siv30 · Rating 5 out of 5]

"צחוק של עכברוש" הוא אחד מהספרים המזעזעים אבל היפים שנכתבו על השואה. הוא מעביר את חווית השואה והזיכרון של השואה במגוון אמצעים סיפוריים החל מסיפור ישיר, דרך שירים ויומנים.

הוא מתמודד עם הפער הבלתי נסבל בין החוויה של הפרט כפי שחווה אותה, לתפיסת החוויה ע"י דור שני, שלישי ובני הדורות העתידיים. הוא מתמודד עם הזיכרון והשיכחה ועם הגילגול של הזיכרון ההיסטורי.

הסיפור עצמו עוסק בילדה בת 5 שנמסרה על ידי הוריה היהודים בערך בשנת 1942 לזוג איכרים פולניים על מנת שאלה יסתירו אותה והיא תהיה מוגנת עד תום המלחמה. ההורים משלמים לזוג הפולנים כופר דמים אבל, האיכר והאיכרה הכניסו את הילדה לבור תפוחי אדמה חשוך ומצחין והיא נדרשת להפוך לנוצריה. לא די בכך שאין לילדה דבר בבור, ולא די בכך שאינה רואה אור שמש במשך שנה, האוכל ניתן לה בצמצום והבן של זוג האיכרים, סטפן, אונס את הילדה בקביעות. רק נחמה אחת יש לילדה, והוא העכברוש שחי עימה בבור אותו היא מכנה סטש.

לאחר שנה, האיכרים מוציאים את הילדה מהבור ומובילים אותה לכנסיה לקבלת לחם הקודש. הכומר, שחוזה במצבה הגופני והנפשי מזדעזע לוקח את הילדה תחת חסותו ומשקם אותה גופנית וגם מסייע לה נפשית תוך הסתכנות עצומה ותוך שהוא מעמיד את עצמו כבן ערובה לאיכר, איכרה ובנם המרושע.

"ישבתי איתה אחר צהריים שלם, עד הערב, והנה המחברת, תראי בעצמך, והייתי מוכנה לכתוב את הסיפור שלה, בדיוק כמו שאמרת, ואולי, לא נעים לי להגיד את זה כי את הרי המורה שלי, אין בכלל סיפור".

ועתה הסבתא מנסה לספר לנכדתה את סיפורה באופן שלא יפגע בנפשה העדינה של הילדה. היא מספרת את הסיפור בסתמיות וברמזים שלא נתפסים ע"י הנכדה. הנכדה עד כמה שהיא מתאמצת לא מסוגלת לתפוס את גודל הזוועה והאימה האצור בתוך סבתה. עולם החוויות והמושגים של שתי הנשים שיש פער של 60 שנים בינהן כל כך רחוק שנדרש כאן מעשה קסמים כדי שהנכדה תבין את הסיפור שנמסר לה.

היא לא מסוגלת גם בגלל היוהרה הבסיסית שיש בדור הצעיר שלימדו אותו על סוג אחד של סיפורי שואה, סיפורי גטו וזוועות מחנות ההשמדה. וגם בשל פערי המשגה ושפה ולבסוף היא מודה כי אין כאן סיפור גדול. אין כאן סיפור שואה קלאסי: "ואני מודה, כל הפרוייקט הזה נראה לי פתאום מיותר, כי נכון שסבתא שלי היתה בשואה, אבל אני לא בטוחה שזה נחשב, מפני שהיא היתה ילדה קטנה והיא לא עברה שום דבר מהדברים הגדולים והמזעזעים שאנחנו לומדים עליהם בשיעורי היסטוריה ובספרים או רואים בסרטים."

הנכדה עד כדי כך מנותקת מהמציאות שמציירת סבתא שלה שהיא הופכת את האיכרים לקורבנות של הזיכרון והשיכחה: "ואני דווקא הצטערתי, מפני שאנשים שהצילו ילדה קטנה מגיע להם שיזכרו אותם ואפילו היה לי לרגע מין כעס כלפיה, כי בכל זאת, מגיע לאנשים ההם שלפחות הניצולה שלהם תזכור אותם, למרות שהיא מתנגדת שיקראו לה "ניצולה". זה נראה לי כל כך לא צודק לשכוח דווקא את אלה שעושים לך טוב, אבל הסתרתי את זה
ממנה..." בתת המודע שלה, מבינה הנכדה את האבסורד ולכן היא מסתירה את המחשבה הסוררת הזו על האיכרים מסבתא שלה אבל הפער הזה בא לידי ביטוי בעוד דרכים שמצביעות על אי יכולתה להבין בכלל את הסיטואציה שבה הסבתא חייה : "שאלתי, איך היא עלתה וירדה ואם היו מדרגות, ואפילו פינטזתי מנהרה מיוחדת שדרכה האיכרים הטובים הוציאו אותה החוצה, לנשום אויר צח, או לטייל, בשעות הלילה או בשעות אחרות כשהם חשבו שזה בטוח. וניחשתי שהם אמרו לשכנים שהם מגדלים איזו יתומה מסכנה, קרובת משפחה שלהם, שבגלל המלחמה אין לה איפה להיות, כמובן שרק לשכנים או לחברים קרובים שהם סמכו עליהם.
והיתה לי לי הרגשה שכל הניחושים על החיים שלה שם קולעים למטרה"

החלק הבא של הספר הוא מקבץ שירים שהתגלו באינטרנט ועוסקים בילדה והעכברוש. לא ניתן לדעת מי כתב את מקבץ השירים אבל מאחר ובחלק הראשון הסבתא רוכשת מחשב ואף עוברת קורס מחשבים, אפשר להניח את השירים הותירה הסבתא במרחב שבו מצאה את האפשרות לבטא את עצמה ואת כאבה:

"שמחה
זה יהיה יום שמח
באמת
כשאדע
שהסטפן לגמרי מת"

בחלק הרביעי של הספר, היסטוריונית אנתרופולוגית מתארת לעמיתה את הגילויים האחרונים שלה בדבר סיפור הילדה והעכברוש. השנה 2099 והחוקרת לימה אנרגלי מתחכה אחר הסיפור הקדום של הילדה והעכברוש. הסיפור התפשט באמצעות רשת האינטרנט. זה היה מחזור שירים לא ארוך שבחלק מהמקרים הסתפחה אליו אגדה. החוקרת טוענת כי מרוב גירסאות לא ניתן לזהות את הגירסה האוטנטית שהופצה לפני ספטמבר 2011 שאז קיבל מחזור השירים את מעמדו.

מהסיפור של החוקרת הקורא למד כי מחזור השירים עברו התמרה ומסיפור אישי על זוועות השואה הפכו למיתוס אפל וחתרני שלא היה ניתן לזהות את מקורות ואף לא את השפה שבה נכתב. מחזור השירים והמיתוס הפכו לתופעה תרבותית רבת משמעות ואדירת השפעה הסיפור הופך למוקד פולחני של תנועות דתיות והפכו לטקסים פולחניים: "בתוך זמן קצר הפכו ילדה ועכברוש לדימוי הוויזואלי הנפוץ ביותר על גבי תאריכונים, לוחות שנה ויומנים דיגיטליים, ודחקו הצידה אפילו את המלאך של רפאל - דימוי שהיה השכיח ביותר בשלהי המאה הקודמת ובראשית המאה הנוכחית." ובהמשך : "שירי ילדה ועכברוש הפכו לטקסטים פולחניים: הם נחרטו על גבי מצבות, צוטטו בהספדים בספרי תנחומים וירטואלים, וזומרו בטקסי אשכבה ושריפת גוויות"

החוקרת נחושה לפצח את סוד התעלומה והיא מבקרת במדינת ישראל של העתיד. באקט כמעט התאבדותי שלאחריו תתנתק החוקרת מרשת העתיד, ובאופן טכנולוגי חודרני וכפייתי היא מעבירה לעמית שלה את סיפור שקיבלה הנכדה מפי סבתא שלה. העמית שבשום פנים אינו מוכן להתמודד עם הסיפור המזעזע של הילדה והעכברוש, נאלץ לקבל את התשדורות של החוקרת על השואה תשדורות שחשיבותן קריטית : העמדת הזיכרון ההיסטורי האותנטי וניקיונו מההתפתחויות המיתיות שאפפו אותו והפכו אותו למותג צרכני.

בחלק האחרון של הספר מובא סיפור ההצלה של הילדה מנקודת הראיה של הכומר שהציל אותה. עומק הזוועה נחשף רק בחלק הזה שבו באמצעות טכניקה של יומן, עוקב הקורא ההמום והמזועזע אחר האירועים ההיסטוריים הנסתרים שלהם לא היתה חשופה הנכדה. הטכניקה הזו מאפשרת חשיפת רובד היסטורי והעמקת הידע של הקורא תוך התמודדות עם אפקט השיכחה.

כפי שכתבתי זה אחד מהספרים היפים והמזעזעים שנכתבו על השואה. הוא מציף במלוא העוצמה סוגיות מטרידות על זיכרון ושיכחה, על התמודדות עם הזיכרון ההיסטורי ושימורו באופן אותנטי ומציף את סוגיית הגישור על פני הפערים בין הדורות. ספר מומלץ בחום.

[Debbie Mc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book mentioned in a CNN article about sexual violence during World War II. The article mentioned that survivors are running out of time to tell their stories, but that many don’t want to or know how to tell their stories after suppressing memories for decades.

Nava Semel’s novel, “And the Rat Laughed,” is mentioned in the article and is about one woman’s attempt to tell her story to her granddaughter, and how the granddaughter misinterprets the story.

The book is written in five parts. The first part is told by the grandmother and is my favorite part. It makes the reader pause to consider how difficult telling one’s story can be, especially when the story is full of pain and horror. Where does one begin? Why tell it now?

The second part is told by the granddaughter. Semel’s attempt to write in the way a child would write is a bit annoying, but she artfully illustrates how a story can be changed unintentionally when it passes from the teller to the “remembearer.” Truly, once a story is told, the listener becomes a bearer of the story.

Part three is a collection of poems intended to tell the grandmother’s story in different ways.

Part four is my least favorite and is why I gave the book such a low score. I do not understand why a futuristic element was added, and in such detail! In my opinion, this made the book much less enjoyable. If you are not a science fiction fan, you can certainly skip to part five without missing the core of the story.

Finally, part five is told by another person key to the grandmother’s story. I will not reveal the person for fear of giving away details prematurely. The person’s identity, though, is mentioned in other reviews.

Overall, I enjoyed the book (except part 4) and found Semel’s perspective on telling stories and hearing them quite thought-provoking.

If I could find a copy of her other book “A Hat of Glass,” I would most definitely read it.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a mother
I had a father
Won't you make do with that?
I loved and lost.
That's the end. The beginning too.

This is one of the most unique and memorable books that I've ever read. One of the things that I really loved about it was the incorporation of different genres and writing styles to show how an emotional memory is transferred from generation to generation. The story begins in Tel Aviv, in 1999, where an elderly Jewish woman struggles to tell her story of survival (in a pit with only a rat for company) during the holocaust. She tells parts of the story to her granddaughter who then interprets the story in her own way, when relaying it to her teacher. Then, 10 years later, a series of poems about the girl & rat become an internet sensation with every reader interpreting them their own way. 100 years later, in a technocratic future where history is no longer studied and rats have been exterminated, an anthropologist, obsessed with the girl & rat myth (which has taken many forms by this stage, including comics and a Japanese animation series) tries to find out it's origins, infiltrating the dreams of his superiors with his insatiable curiousity so that they may wish to find the truth at the heart of the myth. Finally, the reader is shown the diary entries of a person who played a pivital role in the original story teller's life, after she emerged from the pit. 5/5.

[Chris Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm putting this in a MUST READ category. The story begins in the simplest way; an old woman trying to tell her granddaughter what happened to her in the time of the Holocaust. The story of a hidden child. And in a stunning turn, Semel romanticizes the story after telling it! Instead of peeling back layers after recounting the bravery of the child, the heroism of the family, who took her in, the generosity of the townspeople who were willing accomplices on behalf of her safety, she starts with the horror of the story. Hidden meant being abandoned by her parents at the age of five; hidden meant being forced to live in a potato cellar; to be starved by the farmer and his wife - they only wanted the money; to be raped and abused by their son. At the end of the romanticized version that the granddaughter tells to her teacher the following day, Semel gives us the legend of the rat's laughter.

AND THE RAT LAUGHED moves forward in time to the end of the 21st century; it moves through poems about the Girl and the Rat, sharply defining the emotions and realities faced. It moves past more disasters into a world of 'pure' thought and dream states. No physicality, Then suddenly swung back to the time when the Girl was taken from the potato cellar and forced to take confession and the priest, "Stash" who figures in all of the times covered, takes her under his care. Some moments of peace and healing achieved only to be ripped from her at the end of the war when she's abandoned again; "the Zionists are going through the orphanages."

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trigger warning: this review refers to sexual violence during the Holocaust.

If anything in this review raises issues for you, help is available at Beyond Blue.

Although Michael Orthofer's Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction doesn't include a reference to Israeli author Nava Semel (1954-2017), the introduction to Israeli literature in translation has a useful summary that's relevant to a review of Semel's 2001 ground-breaking And the Rat Laughed.

While the nation has enjoyed relatively rapid economic growth and success, the horror of the Holocaust still weighs heavily here, as do concerns about national identity, geographic isolation, and threats from hostile regional regimes.  The unresolved Palestinian situation, especially, has an uncertainty that pervades both daily life and the local literature. (The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Literature, by M A Orthofer, Columbia University Press, 2016, ISBN 9780231146753, p.271-2)

Hebrew, he says, only became a medium for fiction in the 20th century, so this literature even with its frequent biblical references and echoes, often feels very young.  Waves of immigration make it susceptible to more and quicker change than elsewhere over the decades. 

As you can see from the book description at Goodreads, And the Rat Laughed  is an example of this innovation. It uses modernist techniques including pastiche to explore the act of remembrance...

The representation of the grandmother's efforts to tell her story is very moving.  Her granddaughter has been given a project to interview a Holocaust survivor, and despite her teacher's insistence that she ask her questions sensitively, she badgers her grandmother into telling a story that she's been suppressing for decades.  As a five year old child, along with the horror of being hidden — hungry, afraid and neglected by farmers who betrayed their promise to her parents that they would care for her — she was raped by the farmer's son throughout her captivity.  She has never spoken of this to anyone, and she cannot bring herself to speak of it now.

This first part of the text, written from the grandmother's point-of-view, reveals her painful, jangled thoughts along with the fractured scraps that she conveys to her granddaughter, which — as we see in part 2 — are misinterpreted.  The granddaughter grasps the fact that the parents found people that enabled their child to survive, and — resentful that she's might fail her project because her grandmother was so incoherent — she thinks that her grandmother should be grateful to the farmers, she should remember their names so that they can be counted among the Righteous Among Nations.

One name at least.  That's all I wanted.  Damn you, memory.  Just give me a name! I was absolutely begging for it in my heart.

And suddenly I had an awful thought, the worst.  Maybe she can't even remember her own name, the one her parents gave her.  I'd rather not think about what if the name I know her by isn't even — (p.80)

She is shocked when it dawns on her that her grandmother doesn't even know when her birthday is.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/08/14/a...

[Edward Janes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devastating book. Up until recently I have never been interested in reading Holocaust fiction. As I take a deep dive into sexual violence during the Shoah, I now understand why fictional accounts, like And The Rat Laughed, hold an important place on terms of giving voice to otherwise silenced victims. I will leave to others recaps of Semel's material; I'll say though this book exposed crimes and pain previously unknown to me. Just devastating.

[Diana Eberhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unusual structure, five separate parts of a story told by different narrators, in different times.
I found one part confusing, two parts “interesting,” and two parts heart-wrenching.
Overall, really very good.

[Paschalis]

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[Yona Klos · Rating 5 out of 5]

ספר שואה שונה מאוד מהג'נר הרגיל, אבל מטלטל מאוד.
כתוב בצורה מופלאה כמו שנאוה סמל מיטיבה לעשות.
ממליצה מאוד

[Shayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful, interesting, weird, thought-provoking, sad.
I had to put it down several times to absorb it all.
Very interesting concept, delving into memory and how it's passed down from generation to generation. The base of it all is a devastating Holocaust story. Atrocities that no one should ever have to live through.

[La Stamberga dei Lettori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cinque capitoli, cinque diversi piani espressivi compongono questa originale opera di Nava Semel, una delle voci più interessanti della letteratura israeliana. Nata col cognome di Arzti nel 1954 a Tel Aviv, città in cui vive col marito Noam Semel e due figli gemelli, ella è cresciuta in un ambiente poliglotta dove si mescolavano tedesco, inglese, ebraico e yiddish. D’altronde, il suo nome proprio originario è Sheyndl -così si chiamava la nonna, perita nella Shoah-, che in yiddish significa Bella, poi tradotto nell’ebraico Nava.
Ha lavorato a lungo per la televisione e la radio ed è conosciuta non solo come romanziera per adulti e ragazzi (Lezioni di volo; L’esclusa; I segreti del cuore), ma anche come poetessa ed autrice di teatro.
E’ membro del Massua Institute of Holocaust Studies e del Consiglio direttivo dello Yad Vashem di Gerusalemme.
Il presente romanzo, E il topo rise -ma forse è arbitrario e riduttivo definirlo così-, si articola in cinque parti: storia, favola, poesia, sogno e diario, lungo l’arco di 150 anni.

Continua su
http://www.lastambergadeilettori.com/...

[Julie P · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was with great anticipation that I purchased this book after so many positive reviews, and I can say that I was not disappointed. Is it yet another Holocaust story? Certainly, but it is also so much more. What are the importance of memories? Is it imperative that we have those who remember, and thus become our remembearers as time goes on and each generation dies out? What crime is one that is worth reporting? And do we need to reveal every atrocity to each generation in order to help them understand the evil that took place? If we fail to do this will they forget? Nava Semel's book is powerful and awful without being overly graphic. That evil occurred to a five year old girl is important enough to make us shiver with revulsion, but to see her story (as told in a legend to her granddaughter), and then co-opted by society is almost worse. Or is it?

[Laurel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, after hearing about this book multiple times, I found a decently priced copy (difficult to do!) that happened to be a signed copy! This book will probably always remain at the top of my list of most affecting books that have anything to do with the Holocaust. It's of course, so much more than that, but to give it some sort of description. Written in prose, poems, diary, and sci-fi this book talks about memory & the power of forgetting in ways that I am still, and probably will continue to mull over for a very long time. This was an emotionally difficult book, so well written, and thought provoking that I found myself annotating in a book I read for pleasure. I feel like I will be thinking about this book for a very long time, and decompressing from the experience. I have to say this is one of the most powerful, complex books I have read all year, and highly recommend it.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is the fourth book we read in our Israel book group (after Meier Shalev's "A Pigeon and a Boy," Eshkol Nevo's "Homesick" and David Grossman's "To the End of the Land" and it's the first one I didn't love. I think it is the writing and also, probably, the horrifying story. But where the writing, the setting and the characters of the previous three books were so specific, the writing and characters here were more generalized and abstract and almost stock like in some ways. Maybe that was necessary because the book deals with memory and what is and isn't remembered so it may have been part of the narrative device. I admire the author's ambitious structure of the novel using different narrative devices but the futuristic part left me cold.

[Orrezz · Rating 1 out of 5]

an interesting story, a promising novel, written very very bad. The story of the girl hidden in the ground with a rat is told in different prespectives and periods, trying to tell us something about the conterversial value of the memory and the evolution of stories. However, in the end all we have left is an overlong, shallow, and not coherent exercise in different styles of writing. There are deffnetely better books about the subject

[Salome Wilde · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't begin to explain how painful a read this book is. It has moments of reprieve, but it is, of necessity, relentlessly moving, disturbing, and intense. It is also a book that anyone invested in Holocaust studies and gender should read. Human beings can be so unutterably horrible to one another, and we must all be the "remembearers" that Semel asks us to be.

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wasn't the book for me. Read many holocast books and this was not one that struck a cord. It was More about a girl (albeit a Jewish girl) who was sexually abused. This was very different and I enjoyed the beginning but after this not much. Bit to far fetched with the middle. Not one I would recommend.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! The future section was a little bizarre, but the rest more than made up for it. Really different way of storytelling. Very moving.

[Nicole]

I honestly can't tell you how I feel about this book.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Israeli fiction's greatest hits: biblical references, Holocaust, and the themes of memory vs story. Always the best.

[Shelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A captivating and well-wrought novel about the power of memory. Many very painful moments, made all the more so by the need to be remembered.

[Mckinley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique and interesting take on a young jewish girl hidden during WWII told in 5 sections of very styles and with different narrators.

[Ayala Krizel · Rating 5 out of 5]

סיפור אחד של ילדה מסופר מ-5 נקודות מבט שונות.
ספר מטלטל, עוצמתי ומרגש מאד.