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Rating: 
Summary: Good, but missing something
Review: (Actually, this is a 4.5 star rating.)This is a very memorable book, like the first book 'Upon the Head of the Goat' (I read them both at age fifteen, in the spring of 1995, haven't reread them yet, and yet can still vividly rememeber a lot of names, details, and events from both as though I'd only finished reading them yesterday). However, in hindsight it seems as though something is missing, and not just all of the friends and family members who were killed by the Nazis. A lot of sequels to books that were about the Shoah, whether fiction or memoir, or whether the characters were in camps, ghettos, in hiding, or just continually on the run, are kind of a letdown. A lot of intense things happened before, what with daily deprivations, increasing regulations, friends, neighbours, and relatives murdered, taken into ghettos, camps, prisons, and death marches, but the sequels to such books seem more like a routine tale of life after the War, no constant "What's going to happen next?" now that the danger is past and the Allies have assumed protective control of the European nations. Though this book, while being guilty of being mundane in comparison with what went before, is one of the better sequels. The early part of the book is the most compelling, during the final days Piri and her older sister Iboya spend at Bergen-Belsen before the liberation. Piri is very sick and has to spend a long time in the makeshift hospital the Allies set up, and then she and Iboya are off to Sweden to begin new lives, along with their friend Dora (who lost her mother about six months after they were taken to the camp they were in, and is now an einer allen, or one alone in the world) and the two Berger girls, the daughters of the woman who pulled Piri into line with them after she had been selected to stay behind in the camp since she was so weak. Mrs. Berger switched Piri with another woman who had been marching with them in the fünfferreihe (row of five prisoners). They meet a lot of fellow survivors in Sweden, including Herschel, who becomes Dora's boyfriend, and David, who becomes Piri's boyfriend for a short time. Piri and Iboya also discover that one of their four sisters, Etu, has survived too. Etu was living in their old house in Hungary, along with her new husband Geza, but now she wants to go to Palestine, where David and several of his friends are also going. Maybe it's shellshock or denial, but in hindsight I don't really recall some of the strong emotions displayed in other after-the-war narratives present in Piri or Iboya, at least not for long stretches of time, just an occasional moment of reflection that they almost didn't have one another, or remembering back to something awful that happened, like how Piri lost her best friend Judi. I know that no news was usually bad news, and the longer there was no news, the worse it probably was, but where is the frantic searching for their other relatives that I see so often in other memoirs of this sort, even denying that they died and that maybe the Red Cross got it wrong? Other survivors even hold out hope for decades that that other person miraculously survived and is alive somewhere, constantly wondering, placing ads, asking everyone they see in refugee centers or walking by on the road after liberation. When do they even attempt to look for Rózsi, Lilli, Lájos, Manci, even their stepfather, or try to find out what happened to them if they're pretty sure they're dead? Piri suggests looking for their stepfather, but Iboya says if he survived the Russian pow camp, he knew what happened and wouldn't think any of them survived. So they won't even look for him so that if he DID survive, he'd know at least Piri, Etu, and Iboya are all still alive? Only towards the end does Piri finally seem to be hit by the full emotional impact of what has happened. I also, in hindsight, don't agree with how they decided to go to America to be with some aunt they've never met, over staying in their new haven in Sweden, among all of their friends and surrogate family, or going to Palestine with Etu. Etu hasn't been in any camps, but at least she has more of a shared sense of what they had to suffer through, far more than some relative they've never met in America will ever! And why wouldn't they want to be reunited with their only sibling left, the way Etu wanted it to be? Also, Piri and Iboya obviously went through a lot together, yet Piri is content to live with a childless older couple who adopts her, while Iboya is away living in some type of workers' dormitory? In other narratives I've read, the friends or siblings who went through that sort of thing together were inseparable; they wouldn't have been okay with going in different directions so soon after that intense bonding experience. They came so close to losing one another before, so why live apart instead of sticking extremely close together? The other survivors I've read postwar books by want to be close together for comfort and reassurance that they're still there and together; they wouldn't be fine with splitting up! I also would have liked to have had at least one chapter dealing with their new life in America, or maybe just one devoted to the emotional turmoil within. It is one of the better postwar books out there, but still leaves something lacking, both in emotions and in the rather bland life they lead in Sweden after getting used to their new home.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating story. What happens next?
Review: I just finished reading this book and enjoyed, though I did skim some parts that moved a little slowly. Overall, it is an excellent, intimate portrait of a young womans thoughts and concerns after leaving a concentration camp in WWII. It has issues universal to all-- growing up, loyalty yet resentment of an older siblings care, letting go, beginning again, love vs attraction. It also has some thoughts about being a surviver and a Jew and what it would mean to leave her Jewish life behind now that she survived the Nazis...
Rating: 
Summary: :( a book for young ppl read by a young person
Review: I personally did not like this book.It was supposed to be a historical fiction but instead was mostly fiction and fantasy.It wasnt realalistic and put to much weight on the non important things and shruged off the important things.The author had the main character walking around in a daze and had her made unreal desicions and the book barley had deatail.It was like the author streched out the non important stuff and tried to squeeze the important stuff in a few pages.She had the main character liking 5 guys and thinking she was in love but gave it up in a minute for something not important to her.she befriends someone who lies to her and helped destory her family in a few sentences and had her suddenly decide to forgive without nothing to help nut a sentence the first mention of it.Dont waste you time with this book i'v read many historical fictions and this not a good one the author reapeats everything in this book over and over again.
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