Fires in the Dark : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: The Roma Holocaust..........brilliantly told
Review: Louise Doughty crafts a fascinating novel that tells the tale of the Roma (European gypsies) that were rounded up by the Germans and placed in concentration camps. The story revolves around Emil, the first born son of the leader of a nomadic family and how he learns to cope with the nightmare that Hitler created. The daily life is beyond tortuous and yet people continue to struggle to survive. As the nightmarish existence whittles away family and friends, Emil responds with a will to survive that is barely imaginable in the face of such horror.
Fires In The Dark is a story of tradition, family and hope. It is also a story of man's inhumanity to man and the depths to which humanity can both sink and rise. Most of all it is a story of the desire to survive above all odds.
Within this story the author reveals the lifestyle of the Roma,and although much is told there is so much more.
This is a fascinating look at a much ignored population and is both inspiring and horrifying.

Rating:
Summary: The Roma Holocaust..........brilliantly told
Review: Louise Doughty crafts a fascinating novel that tells the tale of the Roma (European gypsies) that were rounded up by the Germans and placed in concentration camps. The story revolves around Emil, the first born son of the leader of a nomadic family and how he learns to cope with the nightmare that Hitler created. The daily life is beyond tortuous and yet people continue to struggle to survive. As the nightmarish existence whittles away family and friends, Emil responds with a will to survive that is barely imaginable in the face of such horror.
Fires In The Dark is a story of tradition, family and hope. It is also a story of man's inhumanity to man and the depths to which humanity can both sink and rise. Most of all it is a story of the desire to survive above all odds.
Within this story the author reveals the lifestyle of the Roma,and although much is told there is so much more.
This is a fascinating look at a much ignored population and is both inspiring and horrifying.

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Title & Subject But Needs More Meat On The Fires!
Review: The author Louise Doughty knows how to find great subjects and writes well as seen in how she captures the characters, brutal beatings, and secret tears surrounding her novel as it unfolds within its title.

Ms. Doughty's horrible tale of what happen to Gypsies while in Concentration Camps during World War II is a novel in its scope and niceties. Few remember that Gypsies were a big part of the 11 Million who died in Nazi and Other Government's Slave Labor Camps. The story breakdowns many myths and stereotypes of Gypsies divulging gypsies as individuals often the subject of judgments out of ignorance, rumors and lingering legends based on untruths.

The author has hit upon a treasure of information seldom told before and hardly ever proclaim by gypsies because they fear outsiders knowing anything about them in detail. They struggle all their lives by surviving through deception, running and overcoming pigeonhole opinions held by others because they are often the victims of so-called helping bureaucrats, justice, and police.

Gypsy's have habitually had to fetch a living on their own because society rejected them into the mainstream unless they conform to the culture of the season. They believe they have a Divine Right to live by numerous means ever since fixing the gambling over Jesus Christ's garments at the crucifixion and returning them to Mary. None of these myths, legends, and history is within this story.

Therefore, information about gypsies their history and culture was lacking so the author never defines the nexus necessary to show why Gypsies have been targets by many governments, political organizations and end up in Slave Labor Camps.

The book desires to focus on Gypsy History, Culture, and Myths, but does not establish how many governments in Europe target Gypsies as a class of undesirables and often blaming them for social ills they did not create much as America did to the Indians, Irish, and Asians as we moved to "Manifest Destiny".

This alone would have many a terrific novel incorporating the abuse, unfair judgments, brutal beatings, and mark of deaths, which was the goal of the author in telling this story. Several novelist have often written their third book first like this one and I can wait for the others too.

If one reads the "Grapes Of Wrath," you would see an Oklahoma Farm Family turn into roaming Gypsies searching for work and survival after they were bull dozed off their farm by banks with legal authority of the government's sheriffs.

Few recognize that for centuries this is how Gypsies continue to exist on their own terms. Often being force to become outcasts of societies built on protecting only those conforming only to society rules and often leaving behind others of different races, tribes, families, and thinking. In the end, such policies often result in branding then to be criminals. Cher brought it out in her song "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves" but only some ever took the time to research anything beyond listening to the song.

"Fires In the Dark" is a story long overdue for people to read and this book is a start of something big. If the author can now write more on Gypsies so we all can learn more and share in the pain of their portrayals by strangers and betrayals by political leaders who knock against them rather than rescue them.

The hardback is not a page turner, can be bland in some places, and one never understands how this first book really requires an introduction of facts before a tacit understanding of its disclosures can bloom into the full enlightenment of her goal of sharing this story with us.

Furthermore, it fails to tell us how they end up, the remnants of those who did survive and the legacies of those who died under the worse of conditions for only being themselves and few standing up for them until this book was written.

I gave it three stars because I was starving for more information and the author did not provide it. 'Fires In The Dark' needs meat on the fires and flashlights of history to blossom into what the author wants to share with us.

Rating:
Summary: The best read in a long time
Review: This book caught my attention on the first page and it hasn't ended yet. It opened my eyes to yet another view of WWII. It has interesting characters and a wonderful story line. I could see the countryside and feel their pain. I would read this book again.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and riveting
Review: This intense, sometimes brutal novel of the internment of Gypsies in concentration camps during Hitler's ethnic cleaning crusade is riveting. The beginning of the book portrays the Roma gypsy's customs, kinship, travel and home life in a very enlightening manner. In a reversal of how gypsies are commonly portrayed, we learn that they are indeed a prideful, skilled and religious people who,in fact, feel that the gadje (anyone who is not Roma) are unclean, slovenly and disgusting. From the time of their imprisonment, we follow Josef's family, Anna his wife, Emil his oldest son and two younger children as they battle to survive.

I think that this is fascinating historical fiction. My only complaint is that the middle section of the book drags a bit too long but the ending is great. Masterful writing and pitch perfect historical detail should draw many readers

Rating:
Summary: (3.5) Caught in the firestorm of World War II
Review: This is a tale of the authentic European Gypsies of Romany, nomadic farm workers who are caught up in Hitler's reign of terror, as he purges his homeland. In the Moravian countryside in 1927, an infant is born in a dilapidated barn, a child who will survive the infamous scourge of Hitler's obsession. Beginning with these difficult years, the gypsies are forced to participate in a census that tracks their numbers and their movements, ultimately drawing them into a trap: a mass assignment to an all-gypsy labor camp, their fate sealed.

The novel addresses the decimation of the gypsy population of Eastern Europe, chronicling the gradual movement of fascism across the country and predicting the end of the nomadic families through mandatory registration and specific "rules" that govern the gypsies' mobility. The men do odd jobs for any farmers still willing to hire them as itinerant laborers, moving their families from one place to another, barely able to sustain the illusion of freedom. Eventually, the Germans commandeer the wagons and animals and the gypsy families are restricted to proscribed areas, later transported to special labor camps, thrown into the nightmare they hoped to escape.

The primary family in the novel is subjected to the rigors, starvation and humiliation of the camps and many die in a massive typhus epidemic. Only one escapes, the boy born at the beginning of the story, in 1927. He makes his way to Warsaw, brokering black market goods and passing as a gadje, or white man, with his fair complexion. In relating the struggle for survival and the decimation of the boy's family, the explicit details are depressing, as such a light-heated and joyful people are destroyed by ignorance and evil. Many pages are devoted to the suffering of individual family members, their travails echoed throughout the labor camp, memories that the youth will carry through out his life.

The writing shines during the closing days of the war, when relief is finally in sight. Groups of German soldiers skirmish with the Resistance, while people course through the streets in anticipation of the Allies or the Russians. If the whole book had the energy of the last chapters, it would have made a wonderful read, but the pages are often tedious until the excitement of the ending. For all the human tragedy of those years, Fires in the Dark is an important chapter in a telling history that cannot be forgotten. Luan Gaines/2004.