It is such a long time since I posted about my library books. This weekend saw my first visit to my library since it was closed at the beginning of lock down. Things were different in there and the staff have obviously worked incredibly hard to make it possible that we can all visit the library safely once again.
I borrowed three books which I think will be amazing and I can not wait to read them.
Renia is a young girl who dreams of becoming a poet. But Renia is Jewish, she lives in Poland and the year is 1939. When Russia and Germany invade her country, Renia's world shatters. Separated from her mother, her life takes on a new urgency as she flees Przemysl to escape night bombing raids, observes the disappearances of other Jewish families and, finally, witnesses the creation of the ghetto.
But alongside the terror of war, there is also great beauty, as she begins to find her voice as a writer and falls in love for the first time. She and Aygmunt share their first kiss a few hours before the Nazis reach her hometown. And it is Zygmunt who writes the final, heartbreaking entry in Renia's diary.
Recently rediscovered after seventy years, Renia's Diary is already being described as a classic of Holocaust literature. Written with a clarity and skill that is reminiscent of Anne Frank, Renia's Diary also includes a prologue and epilogue by Renia's sister Elizabeth, as well as an introduction by Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denial. It is an extraordinary testament to both the horrors of war, and to the life that can exist even in the darkest times.
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Meet Queenie, journalist, catastrophist, expressive, aggressive, loved, lonely. Enough?
A darkly comic and bitingly subversive take on life, love, race and family. Queenie will have you nodding in recognition, crying in solidarity and rooting for this unforgettable character every step of the way.
Elwood Curtis knows he is as good as anyone - growing up in 1960s Florida, he has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart. He is about to enrol in the local black college, determined to make something of himself. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is all it takes to destroy his future, and so instead of college, Elwood arrives at the Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school claiming to provide an education which will equip its inmates to become 'honourable and honest men'.
In reality, the Nickel Academy is a nightmarish upside-down world, where any boy who resists the corrupt depravity of the authorities is likely to disappear 'out back'. Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, "Throw us in jail, and we will still love you." But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.
When Elwood's idealism and Turner's scepticism collide, the result has decades-long repercussions. The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven novel by a great American writer whose clear sighted and human storytelling continues to illuminate our current reality.
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