From the award-winning author of the Booker Prize short-listed The Dark Room a startling portrait of the Nazis' arrival in Ukraine as they move to implement the final solution.
Otto Pohl, an engineer overseeing construction of a German road in Ukraine, awakens to the unexpected sight of SS men herding hundreds of Jews into an old brick factory . . .
Inside the factory, Ephraim anxiously scans the growing crowd, looking for his two sons. As anxious questions swirl around him "Where are they taking us? How long will we be gone?" he can't quell the suspicion that it would be just like his oldest son to hole up somewhere instead of lining up for the Germans, and just like his youngest to follow . . .
Yasia, a farmer's daughter who has come into town to sell produce, sees two young boys slinking through the shadows of the deserted streets and decides to offer them shelter . . .
As these lives become more and more intertwined Rachel Seiffert's prose rich with a rare compassion, courage, and emotional depth, an unflinching story is told: of survival, of conflicting senses of duty, of the oppressive power of fear and the possibility of courage in the face of terror.
Rachel Seiffert is one of Virago’s most critically acclaimed contemporary novelists. Her first book, The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and made into the feature film Lore. In 2003, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2011 she received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Field Study, her collection of short stories published in 2004, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards (2007) third novel The Walk Home (2014), and fourth novel A Boy in Winter (2017), were all longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.
Seiffert’s subject is ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Her characters have included the 12-year-old daughter of an SS officer in 1945, a Polish seasonal worker on a German asparagus farm after the fall of the iron curtain, and – most recently – a young Ukrainian man faced with the choice between resistance and collaboration during the Nazi occupation.
Rachel Seiffert has taught creative writing at Goldsmiths College and Glasgow University, and delivered seminars at the Humboldt University Berlin, Manchester University, and the Faber Academy in London, amongst others; she is a returning tutor at the Arvon Foundation. Her particular interest is teaching writing in schools, delivering workshops for the East Side Side Educational Trust in Hackney, Wellington College in Berkshire, and a number of state secondaries in south east London. She is currently Writer in Residence at Haseltine School in SE26, and works with First Story at St Martin in the Fields Secondary in Tulse Hill.
I held my breath at one point a little more than halfway through this short but extremely powerful story. I was stunned, perhaps expecting it, but not ready for it. Who could be, really ? Certainly not the crowd of Jews rounded up by the Nazis in this small town in Ukraine in 1941 as the German occupation begins. Everything that happens before this slowly leads up to it and everything after it is burdened by it. A few days in the lives of a few people, experiencing fear and confusion, the desire to survive, to save oneself and loved ones is seen through the eyes of a Jewish family, a farm girl, and a German engineer in charge of building roads.
I can't manage to find any other words besides heartbreaking, gut wrenching but there are touching moments and in some way it is also hopeful with the strength and determination, courage and defiance of Pohl, the engineer, Yasia, the farm girl and Yankel, the defiant young boy of the title. He refuses to let the Germans carry off his little brother - " ... no Germans must ever haul Momik. " I can't explain why I read so many holocaust stories. They are so hard to read but yet I am compelled because they are important.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Little Brown through NetGalley.
Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
A slim novel that only hints at the atrocities of World War II. The narrative finds traction shortly before it concludes. This elongated short story about compassion and quiet rebellion offers glimpses of sobering prose but is ultimately ineffectual.
The Ukraine, 1941, the Germans arrive to round up the Jews, and five different characters will be caught up in the horror and terror of these days. A young girl from the countryside trying to locate her boyfriend, two Jewish boys who run away rather than reporting to the warehouse as the Germans ordered, a engineer hired to build the roads and the young man, escaping from the defeated Russian army, who makes a very bad decision.
This is a sparingly written novel, a novel that needs to be taken as a whole. We don't learn about our characters in depth as it is about a certain point in time, and how these characters act and respond to the horror they witness. There is a great deal of humanity shown, some willing and some unwilling, but humanity all the same. Much darkness, but also hope and lightness. It also shows that even those who despised what the Germans were doing, were vastly outnumbered and had little choice but to comply, willingly or not. The characters in this book will cross paths with each other in a pivotal moment and at books end, we find a wonderful show of empathy.
These books are as always hard to read, but this was more narrow in context, more focused, which made the plot move along more quickly. Quick for me is good in these types of books. Very well done though and a notable addition to Holocaust literature.
Beautifully written, vivid prose that is effective in its storytelling as it is in its depiction of war and its ugliness.
A boy in winter is a novel set in the Ukraine in 1941 after the retreat of the Soviet Army and the arrival of the German Soldiers who are greeted by the peasants with food in the hope that life under German occupation may be more tolerable than that endured under Soviet collectivisation.
A short but powerful story, dark and yet hopeful a story where human kindness can be mean so much or so little. A holocaust story be it fiction or non fiction always manages to make it onto my TBR list every month because I feel We as humans always need to be reminded of the horrors and cruelty of the past in a bid to move forward with understanding and compassion as unfortunately "past mistakes do have a habit of repeating themselves" While I found this book well written and very readable I did struggle with emotion in the way the story is told and perhaps that is the intention of the author and while I found it a good read I am not sure how memorable this book will be for me a year from now compared with other holocaust books I have read.
This novel tells of the effect the Nazis arrival in a small Ukrainian town will have on a handful of characters. Initially the author does a great job of showing us the maddeningly naïve attitude of everyone in the face of Hitler's puppets. The only wise character is a young Jewish boy who flees from his home with his small brother. A German engineer, despite his reservations about the Nazis, is more concerned about the quality of the road he's building. A young Ukrainian girl can only think about the boy she wants to marry and the Jewish father of the missing boys is angry at his son even when he's been rounded up with all the other town's Jews and locked in a factory. The novel is written in clean simple prose. It is exemplary in following the show don't tell mantra. Introspection is kept to a minimum as the necessity to act acquires ever more urgency. And the author does a fabulous job at getting you to care deeply about the young Jewish boy and his brother in their quest to escape the Nazis.
This is my third book read in the Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.
A Boy in Winter is a split-perspective tale, focusing on the residents of a small Ukrainian town after it is overrun by the SS in 1941. The differing vantage points to the action, afforded by the varied perspectives, made for a fully-fleshed account, of the horrors inflicted on the Jewish inhabitants, to be recounted.
Reading this made me realise both how limited my reading of this time period was and how I have never before read a book set in this region. Despite that, this was an easily accessible novel that managed to convey the facts correct to the historical time period and geographical setting without alienating readers unfamiliar with it. It sparked in me a desire to vary my future historical reading, as the startling bleak landscape and the captured sorrow of the characters made me understand how important it is not to forget or overlook this horrific period, in my pursuit of others that have previously sparked more initial enjoyment in me.
Despite all this book has given me to take away with, I can not say I completely appreciated my reading experience. I found myself a little distanced, on times, to the emotional focus of the piece. I could both understand what I was reading was horrific in nature but also found it was sometimes left for my imagine to infer this horror rather than it be gotten from the text, itself.
I also found that my affinity with the novel grew as the story-line expanded, and just when I thought I was at the apex it was quickly truncated. This rather blunt closure left me feeling more distanced than ever and, thus, decided my final three star rating.
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2018 Women’s Prize. It had overlap with two books I have already this year, both non-fictional although one written in close to a fictional style, and both motivated by family connections to some of the most terrible events of the twentieth century.
Maybe Esther: A Family Story by Katja Petrowskaja; born in Ukraine to a Russian speaking Jewish-descended but now non-religious and Soviet family, as she picks her “way through the rubble of history” to research her family tree, including a great-grandmother (the maybe Esther of the book’s title) who was shot for speaking to a German officer as she struggled, despite her age and infirmities, to make her way to the Jewish round up in Kiev that would preceded the Babi Yar massacre
East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity" by Philippe Sands; a powerful account of the legal and personal background behind the Nurenberg trials, which links back to the post WWI history of the now Ukranian city of Lviv and forward to the International Criminal Court, and which is given added poignancy and relevance by the author’s family links to the first and legal links to the second.
This book, also set in the Ukraine at the time of the German occupation and enforcement of the holocaust, is entirely non-fictional (albeit with clear factual inspiration) but is also motivated by family connections. The motivation behind the book is best explained in this excellent and moving Guardian article by the author.
Where she reveals that her own family connections are very different: My grandparents were Nazis. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know this. Opa – my grandfather – was in the Brownshirts, and was later a doctor with the Waffen SS; Amfi, my grandmother, was an active party member. – something which has always lead her to consider what it is like to be on the wrong side of history.
This book itself was inspired by the story of Willi Ahrem, who managed to avoid military action by transferring to the construction corps and being stationed behind the lines in Nemirow, a small town in newly occupied Ukraine, where he was to oversee the building of a road … He had done all he could to minimise his involvement in the war. Yet only weeks after his posting, he awoke to the sound of the Jews of Nemirow being rounded up
Full details of the heroic way he dealt with this are at the below link:
The equivalent character in the novel is Otto (after Rachel’s grandfather) Pohl, with effectively the same back story, – and the book opens with him witnessing German soldiers rounding up Jews that have disobeyed a command to gather at the brickworks with some basic possessions as though for a short journey. The book is largely set over the next three days of November 1941 as that round-up plays out in way that is tragically inevitable to us, 75 years later, but which those caught up in those events (on all sides) fail (sometimes willfully) to recognise even as it is happening.
Otto is one of a number of third person point of view characters, others include; a peasant girl Yasia and her fiancee Mykola, a Red Army deserter now serving as an auxillary policeman for the Germans; Ephraim, a Jewish man who co-operated with the request to report but is anxious about his headstrong son Yankel (and his younger brother Momik) who fled the previous night. Yankel is the “boy in winter” of the title but in an interesting stylistic choice is never the main character and we only see him and sense his feeling and characters through those that interact with him.
The book has two memorable set pieces.
In the first Pohl (who the author describes in her article as, compared to Willi Ahrem less a righteous German than a man who tries his best at the worst of all imaginable moments), desperate for workers to meet his demanding targets for completion of the road is ordered by the local SS commander to select workers from the gathered Jews. Pohl sense a trap for himself given the unsuitability of those his foreman starts suggesting, and seeing the brutality with which the Jews are treated refuses to co-operate with what he sees as a degrading process for them – the reader of course realises (as tragically too late does Pohl when the sounds of repeated gunshots rings out later) that the SS commander is offering him the chance to redeem a small number of the Jews.
In the second, we witness the inevitable but terrible and chaotic massacre, but from the viewpoint, via Mykola, of those forced to take part in facilitating it, desensitised by alcohol.
These both occur in the second third of the novel – and in my view the story rather loses its impact in its final third, which focuses on Yasia’s sheltering of the two young brothers and then escape with them to her marsh-dwelling relatives.
The sheer barbarity and unthinkable horror of the Holocaust begs a question: how should literary writers, most of whom were not alive in those times, portray such a heinous event in literature? Some use their art to transcend the Holocaust and prove that in the arc of history, art will always trump evil; among these works are White Hotel, Mischling, and Zone of Interest. The vast majority of works, however, exploit it to provide readers with a sense of moral outrage combined with a satisfying sense of redemption (“I could never do THAT.”)
At a time when, incredibly, anti-Semitism is again on the rise, these novels are necessary so that the lessons of history won’t fade into the background. I “enjoyed” Rachel Seiffert’s novel, if “enjoyed” is the right word. She’s a good writer. But did she add anything to the many shelves of Holocaust-themed books? That’s the question I asked myself.
Her book takes place in the Ukraine in 1941, as German troops march in to murder the Jews. As the Jews quake with terror, not knowing their fate, two young boys escape: Yankel and his little brother. This story is integrated with two others: the story of Yasia, a marsh girl in her late teens who was on the cusp of marriage before her fiancée cast his lot with the Reds, and German engineer Otto Pohl who is masterminding a road and whose conscience refuses to let him simply do his job.
In cinematic fashion, the stories are developed, and the characters earn our empathy; in short, we root for them. Parts of the story are, of course, preordained. But there is also a formulaic sense—we know these stories will integrate and if we’re honest with ourselves, we have a feeling of where each character will end up in the end.
For me, this is a hard book to rate. It’s a good book, plot-driven, fast-moving, and capable of creating all the emotions it sets out to do. Yet it doesn’t really cover new creative ground and its appropriation of the Holocaust to serve the literary gods left me feeling unsettled.
It's 1941 in a small Ukrainian town, and the Russian army has been burning farms as they retreated. The Ukrainians are hoping for better treatment from the Germans who are invading. However, the Germans round up the Jews into an old factory building. Thirteen-year-old Jewish Yankel decides he does not trust the German soldiers, and runs away with his younger brother on his back. A farm girl, Yasia, shelters and feeds the two boys for the night, putting herself in danger so she must also flee. Meanwhile, a German civil engineer, who is building a road through the marshes, is facing a moral dilemma. He thought he could stay away from the Nazi mission by only doing his road building, but that proved impossible.
Rachel Seiffert writes with lovely spare prose. While there is terror and darkness in this book, kindness and compassion are also demonstrated. There is also the sense that people can be backed into "no-win" situations, even if they are courageous, in the presence of deep evil. "A Boy in Winter" shows people making moral choices in terrible circumstances. The mental picture of Yankel carrying his little brother on his back for days, determined that they would survive, will remain with me. This was a timely read since the world has been watching the people of Ukraine carrying their loved ones to safety from a new terror during the last month.
I must admit that sometimes I feel there are just too many books set against the stark backdrop of the Holocaust but this simple but affecting fable almost succeeded in changing my mind. The language is plain but there is barely a word wasted as the multiple characters whose stories alternate at the start of the book are reduced to just three survivors.
Most of the story occurs over a few days in a Ukrainian town, as the Germans arrive and arrest the substantial Jewish population. The titular boy escapes with his young brother and is helped by a farm girl who has come to town to sell produce. When she too is threatened she leads them towards her uncle who lives in marshland held by partisan guerillas.
This is a powerful story told in superb fashion. Seiffert manages to bring forward many aspects of German brutality against Jews and others in the Ukraine shortly after the invasion of Russia. Her choice of characters to present the story is outstanding, her prose is spare yet descriptive (not a word wasted), and the plot is compelling. Seiffert brilliantly trusts the reader to add the parts she does not tell, which enhances the reading experience mightily.
There is also the intriguing way she uses the aspects of history she leaves untold. If you know what the Germans did to Jews in the Ukraine, or even if you don't, you will imagine the worst and you will not be wrong. The Germans were horrible people, carrying out their hatred of Jews which had been ingrained in them for centuries by the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and then made a part of Hitler's insane national policy. They were indeed, as Daniel Goldhagen called them, "willing executioners."
This is one of those books that didn't inspire much of a reaction in me in either direction. There's certainly not enough here to love, but there's not much to strongly dislike, either. This felt to me like a bloated short story, whose subtleties would have perhaps been more effective in a shorter, more concise format.
A Boy in Winter's greatest strength is that it effectively downplays the grandiosity of the events it's portraying. Though it is a World War II novel (and I know most people's reactions to its inclusion on the Women's Prize longlist was 'oh no, another World War II novel'), it really doesn't feel like one. It takes place over the course of three days toward the beginning of the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941. Seiffert deftly captures the sense of confusion and uncertainty for these characters who are unknowingly on the precipice of this massive historical event.
This is a quiet novel whose sparse, economical writing style suits its tone well. But the characters are forgettable and paper thin, the plot is nonexistent, the thematic resonance falls short, and the setting is rarely utilized to its full potential. I just don't quite understand what Rachel Seiffert was attempting with this. There's nothing terribly striking or unique or innovative or timely about this particular story that would recommend it over the sundry other Holocaust novels out there, or the exciting contemporary fiction that's being published every day. This isn't a bad book, but my experience reading it was a mostly hollow one. I'm a fan of quietly moving books, but there needs to be something that resonates for them to be effective, and that was just missing here.
I really enjoyed the clear, sparse writing, and the descriptions of the landscape, especially towards the end of the book. It was in the final third that it really picked up for me, even though sometimes I felt I wanted more focus on particular characters. The horrors of what happened in the Ukranian town were very well handled - perfectly underplayed so that much was left to my imagination. But early in the novel I felt like the tension was a little lacking, with a lot of time spent with not much happening. I have the feeling though that this book will definitely stick in my head and maybe I'll come to like it even more.
Clean, clear writing that was an uncomplicated pleasure to read. The story itself is heartrending and compellingly good, at times unputdownable if extremely disturbing in places.
Ukraine 1941. The story is familiar. German barbarity in the Second World War. The setting is one less featured in British literature. Here the Ukraine provides the backdrop rather than Western Europe.
The economic devastation of the countryside brought about by Stalin’s collectives meets the invading German military, accompanied by the SS. The Russian scorched earth tactics happen as the Russian army withdrew further east. Against this backdrop the rural communities in Ukraine, the marshlands, are repeatedly presented with more and worse discrimination, mass murder and internecine strife. Rachel Seiffert has written a short book about a much discussed subject. Is there anything more to say? Does she say it in a way that is different, that shines new light on the horrors of German ethnic cleansing in 1941? Not really. That’s not to say that this isn’t a well written book, a story that needs to be told and re-told in a world where national and ethnic rivalry and bitterness continue to exist.
A Boy in Winter traces four personal storylines as the German, SS led, troops, exterminate the Jewish population in the villages. Seiffert is aware that the story is a familiar one to any student of 20th century history, and she leverages that assumed knowledge and awareness in the clever way the key characters just go silent. There is no specific moment of removal; it’s sudden, it’s unfinished. It’s a literary facsimile of the true life events in the Holocaust where people disappeared suddenly and mostly without trace. There’s Otto Pohl in charge of road works heading eastwards; Mykola a conscript, first by Russians, then the Germans; Ephraim & Miriam hustled out of their homes. We start to get to know them and they disappear abruptly. This is very effective writing. I was less engaged by the three most central characters, and their bid for survival. Yasia, Yankel and Momik are the focus of the last quarter of the book, and this just took the edge of what was an excellent and thought provoking story.
I don’t expect a Boy in Winter to win the 2018 (Baileys) Women’s Prize, but it’s chances of shortlisting are good.
2.5 to 3 stars - This was a part hit and part miss. I've read much better historical fictions . I know I'm not liking the book when I start to skim thru pages .
First of all, “A Boy in Winter” is a strange title for this novel by Rachel Seiffert, because it’s not really about a specific boy. It’s about a collection of characters in the Ukraine during the fall and winter of 1941-1942, as the German SS rounds up Jews in towns and villages across the country.
Various points of view are: a 17 year old farm girl, two young Jewish boys in hiding (their family having been captured), a German engineer pressed into service to build a road for the Reich, an SS Officer who sacrifices his humanity to follow orders, a young Ukrainian man who has deserted the Red Army on their retreat and singed up with the German occupiers, and various non-Jewish town-folk who hide while the Germans are rounding up their friends and neighbors.
The novel is highly descriptive and I don’t say this often, but I think it would be better as a film than a novel.
Post Script: A few weeks after writing this review I saw the movie "Come and See" (1985, Not Rated) a Soviet War film that has almost the same plot as "A Boy in Winter", and is VERY visceral (and disturbing! If it was rated for the US it would be R). The film follows a young man in Belarus in 1943, and involves the SS rounding up citizens of towns and villages. I highly recommend the film (got it on DVD from Netflix.) The film has a Wikipedia page for more information.
While ultimately a brief snapshot of several days in rural Ukraine during World War II, this solemn novel reflected a much deeper understanding of thousands of similar stories throughout Europe during those terrible years. This was also a novel about decisions; small, insignificant ones and large, life-altering ones. We have the luxury today of knowing the historical ending and the devastation along the way. The author of this story placed the reader in the terrifying middle where the smallest choices could have permanent consequences. Poignant and very well written.
Whenever I read a description of another new novel dealing with The Holocaust I feel a little twinge of uncertainty. Despite being one of the most horrific acts of genocide in the past century it’s a subject that’s been covered in countless novels. Is there anything new to say about this atrocity? Of course there is. Many novels from Audrey Magee’s “The Undertaking” to Ben Fergusson’s “The Spring of Kasper Meier” have proven this to me. But never has a novel I’ve read about this period of history felt so relevant and close-to-home than Rachel Seiffert’s new novel “A Boy in Winter.” I’m conscious that this has a lot to do with the current politics of our world, but I truly recognized in this story situations and patterns of behaviour that feel very near. Seiffert has fictionally dealt with this era before in her debut book “The Dark Room” which is composed of three novellas connected to the war and set in Germany. This new book is set in a small village in the Ukraine over a period of a few days in late 1941 when the Nazis come marching through “cleansing” the community of its Jewish population. It’s stunningly told and it’s a devastating story, but it also speaks so powerfully about the world we live in now.
I’m sincerely disappointed in this book. It could have been so much more. Here are my issues:
1. What’s up with the title? It makes no sense. There are many characters in this novel and does not focus on one boy 2. The author did a fabulous job describing the emotions of the captured Jews. It was horrifying and descriptive. But the rest of the characters - the main characters - fell emotionally flat. I hoped they’d survive, but i never felt connected to them 3. I was glad to finish the book, but ironically Felt it wasn’t long enough. It was nicely written but it could’ve been so much better/detailed. 4. The ending sucked. It sort of wrapped things up, but also left a lot up in the air. An actual resolution would’ve been appreciated. It felt like the author simply got bored and decided to end the novel.
There are many more books in this genre that are much more satisfying than this one. I’d give this one 2.5 stars, and that’s a bit generous.
It's plain to me shy Seiffert was long listed for the Booker. Her writing is elegant and haunting at once. Some parts of this World War Two drama were horrific but Seiffert takes it down a notch so the inevitable goings on such as a round up of Ukrainian citizens by the occupying German army almost comes as a surprise. There's also the irony of the Germans building a road to better get through this near wilderness and on to the next stop and the performance of more atrocities and they employ, indenture or recruit deserting Red Army personnel to build the road under horrible conditions. You can almost feel the bitter cold as you read.
Some unexpected and unexpectedly tender relationships are forged and somehow Seiffert is able to make some of the German characters sympathetic though that might be overstating however she lets you in to the human conflict anyone of conscious must have felt during the war. A love story is included as well along with some important family and friendship ties. I might be back to change the four stars to five because I can't stop thinking about this book.
Thank you for to the publisher for providing an advance reader's copy.
In a New York Times book review by Liesl Schillinger of A Boy In Winter, I read the following about the author, Rachel Seiffert, “ Her abiding concern, ever since she learned as a child that her German maternal grandparents had supported Hitler’s Reich (her grandfather as a doctor in the Waffen SS, her grandmother as a Nazi Party member), has been to explore the motivations, contradictions and weaknesses of the bystanders, victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. “How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?” she asked in the Guardian article, adding, “The times being what they are — I have found myself turning again and again to the question.”
I found this added insight to be helpful in explaining Seiffert’s motivation in writing yet another novel about the horrors of the German occupation in WWII. This story is set in a small Ukrainian town swarming with the SS, after the German invasion. In this short novel, we meet characters that include Yankel and his younger brother, running away from the roundup of the town’s Jewish population (that includes his parents and sister), Yasia, a country girl who shows mercy to these two young boys, and Otto Pohl, a German engineer who is disenchanted and disgusted by the war.
The writing is spare and yet intense, and does a good job evoking the horrors and fear of this situation without being graphic. And I found that omission to be quite powerful. I thought this was a successful work that portrayed just a small part of humanity caught in an untenable situation.
1 star for this prejudiced disgrace of a book is too much. 0.5 is more appropriate, with half a star to acknowledge the author's ability to spell. I think that when you pick a sensitive topic like the collaboration of Ukrainians with the nazi invaders, you just have to learn you "math". When you say that Ukrainians supported fascists because they ran away from Stalin and got seduced by Hitler's promises of prosperity, oh you've got to study the crap out of archives (or interviews) - whatever your sources are. One might say that it's "only fiction" so Seiffert can appeal to het imagination or some crap like this. But let's be honest - how often do we check the factual material in historical novels? So, it's not all innocent and does influence readers' opinions, including those on today's Ukraine. And Seiffert's message is clear: Ukraine equals fascism. For whatever reason, Seiffet connects modern symbols of the country - yellow-blue flag - with fascist ideology. Perhaps it's less surprising that a propaganda text like this is listed in the NYT Best books of 2017, a notoriously Ukrainophobic medium.
The writing in Rachel Seiffert's A Boy in Winter is more stark than poetic. The novel felt effective with regard to the way in which she followed different characters affected by the German invasion; quite a thoughtful and varied mixture was used, which increased the scope of the work. I did not enjoy A Boy in Winter as much as I expected to when I began, and as far as novels about the Second World War go, Seiffert's work would not feature in any lists of my favourites. However, the final third of the novel really picked up, and I could hardly put it down. A Boy in Winter is a slim and thought-provoking work of historical fiction, which feels well measured, but perhaps does not match the glory which its blurb promises.
There are a lot of books on the Holocaust out there. I hope it continually serves as a reminder to never forget the atrocities we are capable of committing against fellow humans. Baffling to think of now, but one person managed to convince a whole civilisation to act the way they did.
This is a story set in a particular time period, 1941 in Ukraine, and looks at human nature and the different forms humanity can take. Not all Jews were killed in concentration camps, and there is a part in the middle that was truly haunting, especially as the author lets us imagine for ourselves what might have happened. Even as people grapple with their conscience, it’s the doing-nothing that strikes me. And there are different ways of being able to justify this to one’s self: alcohol, trying to remember there is an end to it, trying to remove yourself from the thick of the situation etc. Fear makes us weak.
Reading around this period in time, I came across an article written by the author. Her grandparents were Nazis, and she talks of ‘what if you were born on the wrong side of history’. I can see why she has written a novel like this.
I liked this, didn’t absolutely love this, but it did make me reflect a lot on what people are capable of, and what we as individuals might be capable of when push comes to shove. Things are rarely black and white, after all. A solid 3 stars.
2.5 stars. This book wasn’t for me at all. I can’t deny it’s not a nice story, getting to know all the characters, but I felt very distanced from it all considering the premise is intended to make you feel (world war II, anti-semitism, orphaned children). I think this was a fault with the writer, Seiffert, because her writing never set you in anybody’s shoes. The reader’s an outsider looking in. It didn’t work for me. Unfortunate. Definitely my least favourite so far from the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist.
This quietly effective novel deals with one of the many horrific manifestations of the Holocaust -- in this case, the mass murders of Jews in Ukrainian villages overtaken by the Nazis.
Because these events are so traumatic, Seiffert -- A British novelist whose German grandparents were members of the Nazi party -- makes the wise choice to go into great detail about the roundup of Jewish townspeople, their confinement, and the chaotic moments leading up to the killings, but to spare readers the graphic details of the slaughter itself.
The novel revolves around three primary characters. Two young Jewish brothers, Yankel and Momik, manage to escape the roundup because, as Seiffert expertly sketches, Yankel has always been rebellious, while also being incredibly loyal to his brother. As his family and other Jews are jammed together inside a barracks building, Yankel is already shepherding his brother perilously through the streets and alleys of the town. Also in town at the time of the roundup is Yasia, a teenage farm girl who is in love with Mykola, a young farmer who was conscripted into the Russian Army and then deserted from it. Mykola signs up with the German Wehrmacht to be a police officer, which puts him in the middle of the chaos and horror of the final solution.
Yasia has gone to the town in hopes of seeing Mykola. Instead, she ends up stumbling across the two brothers and sheltering them in a relative's hayloft, until neighbors discover them and demand that they be expelled.
The end of the book focuses on Yasia's and the boys' attempts to escape the Germans and move deep into the isolated marshlands of Ukraine.
There is one other subplot that I didn't care as much about, and it's ironic, because it apparently was Seiffert's original inspiration for the novel -- the real-life tale of a German road engineer who volunteers to build a highway in Ukraine as a way of avoiding military life under the Nazis, and who finds himself having to compromise all his values as he witnesses what is being done.
Despite some slowness in the plot, I thought Seiffert was especially good in showing how little people completely know when they are in the middle of evil. Yankel's father thinks they will be sent to a Jewish ghetto. Yasia thinks Mykolo will take care of her. Even the Wehrmacht officer in charge tries to convince the road engineer that he is only doing what he is being forced to do.
Through a thousand small and large compromises, evil ends up triumphing -- a timely reminder for the world we now live in.
I find books on The Holocaust interesting mainly because it is a topic that is so popular that authors are now finding new ways to approach this atrocious period in history. However there are times when things take the normal route and it is just as good. I would classify Rachel Seiffert’s A Boy in Winter in this category.
The book focuses on four people: Yasia, a Ukrainian farmer’s daughter, Otto Pohl, an engineer hired by the Reich to build a road and two Jewish brothers; Yankel and Momitz. As the book progresses the destinies of these characters cross. The era, as mentioned is the second world war and SS men are in the Ukraine rounding Jews for labour camps.
On one hand The characters are beautifully realised. I cared for them and I wanted to know what would happen to their fates throughout the novel. In fact through each character us readers get a different perspective of the Holocaust. From Otto’s point of view it clashes with his morals, Yasia is on the periphery and is just witnessing the horrors and the brothers have escaped persecution and are trying their best to avoid being seen. Seiffert gives each character an individual voice and that helps when reading the book.
However A Boy in Winter is not without flaws. There were times when I wished there was more character development, especially from Otto, who is caught between obeying orders and following his own ethical codes. Other than that this is a good solid story, Seiffert may not have contributed anything new to the Holocaust genre but I reason that such things do not matter. What is more important is that the novel is well structured, has relatable characters and captures the spirit of that time (or at least how I see it from reports and other portrayals from the media) and A Boy in Winter achieves this.
Many years ago I read The White Hotel by D Thomas (1981). It was the most harrowing novel I'd read about the Holocaust at that time. Ive never forgotten its descriptions of the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar (near the Ukraine capital of Kiev). So I came with some trepidation to this novel set in the Ukraine about another massacre of Jews, wondering if I could manage to read another such tragic story.
However, the focus of this novel is not on the massacre itself but rather how the characters of the German engineer Pohl and the Ukrainian peasant girl, Yasia, and some other minor characters deal with what they see and hear. What their moral choices are and how they act on them.
The boy of the title is Jewish Yankel, who escapes the purge with his young brother. He becomes dependent on Yasia for his survival. Their flight from the town towards the marshes had me holding my breath and reading quickly as the narrative pace intensified and the boys' future was in the balance.
Rachel Seiffert is interested in how the individual copes in times of tumult such as war. This novel reminded me of the traumas faced by so many across history and made me conscious that our fears of the current COVID19 virus are minor in comparison, at least here in Australia. We don't really know what fear is. Novels like this remind us and put our own situation into perspective.