Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys.                      Young Adults.

 

            On January 30^th 1945, German passenger liner the ’Wilhelm Gustloff’, was attacked by torpedoes from a Russian submarine as she sailed for Kiel in Northern Germany.  The ship was carrying thousands of evacuees from the Baltic and East Prussia, mainly women and children, plus hundreds of wounded German troops, on the run from the approaching Russian Army.

            The ship sank within an hour, with an estimated loss of 9000 people, 5000 of whom were children.  It is the worst maritime disaster in history, dwarfing the Titanic and Lusitania disasters – but the least known.  Until  Author Ruta Sepetys (of Lithuanian ancestry) decided to write a novelised version of this dreadful event:  the characters she has chosen to tell the story are heartbreakingly, appallingly real enough for us to care deeply for them and their goal, which is to eventually board a converted ocean liner at the Polish port of Gotenhafen, thence to Kiel, and safety in Der Fuehrer’s Germany.

            Emilia:  Polish, but trying to hide the fact, for everyone knows what Germans think of Poles:  they are subhuman.  Well, this subhuman has already met the advancing Russians, was brutally raped and is now pregnant.

            The Wandering Boy:  he comes out of the trees to walk with their growing numbers.  He is 6 years old and ‘his Oma didn’t wake up’.  His name and a Berlin address is pinned to his coat.

            Florian:  a young restorer of fine art, (with a clever, hidden talent for forgery) who has also committed the theft of one of the most precious pieces of art from the art thieves he worked for.  He rightly trusts no-one.

            Joana:  a compassionate Lithuanian nursing assistant, who feels perpetual guilt for leaving her family behind – as they all do:  uppermost on everyone’s mind is the fate of their loved ones caught up in this cruel, inhuman maelstrom:  will they ever see each other again?

            More people join them, wounded, suffering, but buoyed by the hope of eventually being evacuated to Germany – even though the news they hear on the road is ominous:  the Fatherland is obviously losing the war, but the main objective is to keep ahead of the Russians.  Terrible tales have been told of their brutality.  And they’re all true.  Still, the evacuees are in front,   There will be no-one left to slaughter;  they’ll all be gone by the time those beasts arrive.

            This novel reads like a thriller.  Ms Sepetys ratchets up the tension with every chapter, but her characters never lose their authenticity or humanity.  It was a privilege to read this book, and it should be read by everyone, not only Young Adults, as a testament to the goodness of people, as well as to their worst excesses.  SIX STARS.

 

Love after Love, by Ingrid Persaud.

 

            ‘What is Love?’  A question that has been baffling famous figures of history – and mere mortals such as we – for millennia.  I think the question should be not what it is, but why does it change (especially to its opposite) as time passes.

            Ingrid Persaud’s debut novel explores the nature and degrees of loving each other, commencing with Betty and Sunil Ramdin, Trinidadian descendants of the Indian canecutters imported five generations ago.  They have one little boy, Solo, whose birthday it is when Sunil takes a tumble down the back stairs and doesn’t survive the trip:  Betty now has to raise Solo herself – fortunately, she has a good admin job at a high school and they manage to make the best of their new life, which becomes even better with the advent of Mr. Chetan, the maths teacher, who asks to rent a room from her.  He is with them for several years, becomes a much-loved father figure to Solo, and a better-than-best-friend to Betty, to the point that one night, they share secrets.  Betty reveals that Sunil didn’t fall down the stairs:  he was pushed.  By her.  For Sunil was a drinker, and became a different, monstrous person when he was drunk – as her numerous hospital visits and injuries showed.  She didn’t expect him to die;  she just wanted him to experience broken bones, cuts and bruises, the same he had inflicted on her, but the worst happened.

            Mr Chetan’s secret is his homosexuality, worse than a crime in Trinidad  - it can get you killed!  His own family had banished him from their lives after he and his schoolfriend Mani were discovered in an embrace;  Mani’s family eventually saw sense and accept and love him as he is, but Chetan’s family have not:  he is dead to them.  And Trinidadian attitudes to LGBTQ people are biblical in their condemnation:  all ‘Bullers’ are fair game!

            Sadly, teenage Solo overhears some of these revelations and his love for his Mammy turns to hatred.  He leaves for New York to seek out his father’s family in the hope that he will find a better kind of familial love than that from which he flees – and finds a very different life from what he expected.

            Ms Persaud has filled her story with exuberant, wonderfully engaging characters, all the while demonstrating with almost careless ease the many and various necessary connections we need to have a life of some meaning:  maternal love, familial love, romantic and sexual love, and the love of friends:  have I covered all the bases?  FIVE STARS.