Between Shades of Gray in Around the World

Jun 11, 2013 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013-around-the-world, fiction, novels, young-adult

This is a moving and vivid depiction of Stalin's genocidal treatment of the Baltic peoples. It's a story too little known in the United States. At least partly I believe because we give the thugs of the left far too much forgiveness compared to the thugs of the right. And we're talking tiny nations the world found too easy to forget: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet regime conducted mass deportations to labor camps in Siberia of particularly the intelligentsia, trying to destroy their c This is a moving and vivid depiction of Stalin's genocidal treatment of the Baltic peoples. It's a story too little known in the United States. At least partly I believe because we give the thugs of the left far too much forgiveness compared to the thugs of the right. And we're talking tiny nations the world found too easy to forget: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Soviet regime conducted mass deportations to labor camps in Siberia of particularly the intelligentsia, trying to destroy their cultures. In an afterward, Sepetys claims that a third of the population of those countries was lost. Millions died in those labor camps before Stalin died--the survival rate was actually better in the Nazi concentration camps than the Soviet Gulags. And when the survivors returned home? They were forbidden to speak of their experiences. Sepetys seeks to give them that voice, to tell the stories she heard from her Lithuanian relatives and others. I read she decided to write it as fiction to make it easier for people to tell their stories to her.

She tells it through the eyes of a young girl, Lina Vilkas, an aspiring artist who is fifteen when she is deported with her mother and younger brother to Siberia. Indeed, this was intended I read as a young adult novel--although it certainly deals with plenty of very adult situations. The novel is harrowing, indeed grim for much of its length--although as signaled by the very use of the first person, this is ultimately a novel of survival, the darkness shot through with hope and love and goodness even through so much that is evil. Ultimately I didn't find it depressing--and I certainly found the novel engrossing.

If I have a caveat--one that lost it a star--it's a stylistic quirk I admit I did find annoying. It's a tribute to the overall strength of the narrative I was never tempted to bail on the book. Most of the story is told in straightforward chronological fashion. But there are frequent flashbacks--and to me they just didn't flow. It probably didn't help Sepetys chose to set those episodes in italics. I suppose to give us a sense we were looking through the gauze of memories--but I found it jarring. That aside, I'm very glad to have read this book--and I think several scenes will linger in memory. ...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ya-fic, historical-fiction

Loved this - the setting, the characters, the story. There is a neat endnote explaining the "true story" element of the book and encouraging readers to learn more about Stalin and his occupation of Lithuania. Appropriate for 7th graders + up who are prepared for the subject matter.

Read for work. ...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Toni rated it really liked it

Shelves: holocaust, multi-cultural, historical-fiction, young-adult, russia, lithuania, siberia

Beautifully written story based on survivors' stories of unbearable hardships suffered under Stalin's regime, beginning in World War II. This brings to light a little known time that literally wiped the Baltic States from world maps. The story in told in heartbreaking prose in the form of one young girl's experiences. ...more

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Sep 29, 2010 Daisy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russia-ussr, eastern-europe, aroundtheworld2012, lithuania

Tragic and moving.
I did this book a disservice by listening to it instead of reading it. The narrator took me out of the story with a sadly ineffectual reading. She sounded too distant, too American in her pronunciation, and too superficial in her intonation. The book is better than this narration.

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