Books Set in Europe: North Sea and Norway

The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware (2016)

The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware is a psychological thriller.

Lo Blacklock, the narrator, is a British travel journalist who has just landed a plum job on an exclusive cruise on along the Norwegian coast.  Just a few days before the cruise, her apartment is burgled while she is sleeping off an alcoholic haze.  The incident shakes her up, leaving her unable to sleep.  To add to her anxiety, her long-time boyfriends suggests that she move in with him, but she is unable to make that commitment.

Thus, the cruise begins with Lo being in an emotional fragile state.  On the first evening of the cruise, she meets the woman in the Cabin 10, the cabin next to her, and borrows a tube of mascara.  Later that evening, she hears noise from Cabin 10, followed by a big splash that sounds like a body hitting water.  Lo calls security only to be told that Cabin 10 is empty.  There is no guest in that cabin.

She spends the next few days trying to convince her fellow passengers that she saw a woman in the cabin, and now she fears that woman has been killed.  No one believes her, and the “evidence” Lo thinks she has suddenly goes missing.  Is Lo losing her mind?  Was the woman in cabin 10 really a figment of her imagination?

The book was a page turner, but the ending fell apart as there was too much drama to be believable.  It would make a good movie, though.

Read:  February 25, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in Eastern Europe: Poland

The Librarian of Auschwitz, by Antonio Iturbe (2012; English Translation, 2017)

The Librarian of Auschwitz is based on the real-life experience of young Dita Adler Kraus.  She and her family were Jews living in Prague, when there were round up by the Nazis and first sent to Terezín, before being transferred to Auschwitz.  At Auschwitz, they were placed in the Block 31, the Family Block, where, although men and women were separated, families could remain somewhat intact.

Fredy Hirsch, one of the prisoners, ran a secret school, to keep some sort of normalcy for the children.  Although books were forbidden, the school had a collection of 8 dog-eared and ragged books that had been smuggled into the camp.  Dita was chosen to protect the books.  The novel depicts daily life in the camp and the struggle to stay alive, while maintaining a modicum of humanity.

Life in Block 31 was hardly without its struggles, and one never knew when the Nazis would transfer prisoners to the gas chambers.  Many of the characters in the novel are real people.  The author met with and interviewed Dita when she was well into her 80s.  In the afterwards, the author acknowledges that he took some artistic licenses with the story, but does present a summary of the lives of some of the other characters.  One such real-life person was Rudy Rosenberg (also known as Rudi Vrba), who escaped the camp and wrote a detailed report to inform the world of the horrors of the concentration camps.  His report, however, was unheeded.  Fredy Hirsch was another real person who life continues to spark controversy.

Read:  February 20, 2018

4 Stars 

Books Set in Asia: Israel

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, by Sarit Yishai-Levi (2013; English Version 2016)

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows several generations of the women in the Ermosa family from the beginning of the 1900s, through the birth of the State of Israel, to the 1970s.  The Ermosas were Sephardic Jews who had lived in Jerusalem since they were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.  The novel is sprinkled with Ladino words and phrases.

Gabriela is the some-times narrator of the novel as she comes of age and tries to understand her very dysfunctional family.  Her grandmother Rosa tells her that the Ermosa women are cursed to be married to men who don’t love them.  Rosa had been an orphan when she suddenly finds herself married to well-to-do Gabriel.  For a brief moment, she believes her life has changed, but then finds herself in a loveless marriage, arranged by her mother-in-law to keep her son from his true love.

Gabriela’s mother, Luna, was the eldest daughter of Gabriel and Rosa.  Luna, deemed the most beautiful woman in Jerusalem, is a spoiled, self-centered woman.  Family life circles around Luna’s moods.  Luna married David, who had a secret past.  She thought he was her knight in shining armor, only be faced with the daily grind of married life.  When her daughter, Gabriela, is born, she feels no bond with her child.  Gabriela bonds with her loving father, aunts and grandmother, but feels no special love for her mother.

The family dramas are played out against the drama of the events leading up to the creation of the State of Israel, including the tensions between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim.  We learn much about the stories and lives of Rosa and Luna.  The novel seems to take an abrupt turn, however, when the focus is on the adult Gabriela, and her story is told quickly on only a few pages.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will look for others by this Israeli author.

5 Stars

Read:  February 7, 2018