The Dark Room, by Rachel Seiffert

The Dark Room is comprised of three novellas joined by setting and theme, but with completely different characters (I’m not really impressed when something touted as a novel contains three lengthy short stories, but that’s just a personal hang-up). The first part, “Helmut”, tells the story of a young photographer’s apprentice in Germany during World [...]

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A History of Forgetting, by Caroline Adderson

“The first thing she learned working at Vitae was about history: that the present rests upon layers of the past, but is a stratum so unstable, so shot with fault lines, that now and then the then rears up and knocks down the now.” Often, when I’m choosing a book to read, I stand in [...]

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An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943

To begin, I must thank the lovely Anne Lewis, for introducing me to Etty. Even in the first few pages of her diary, I felt I knew Etty well. She was the kind of woman that transcends time. As a fairly well-off Jewish woman living in Amsterdam, in the beginning her diaries are not unusual [...]

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