Gretel and the Dark

"Dark" is right there in the title, and this book is: half Holocaust story, half German fairy tale, layered and woven together.

Krysta is the stubborn daughter of a German doctor at Ravensbruck (though the camp isn't mentioned by name until near the end of the book); she found her mother's body after she committed suicide, and she discovers her father's dead body as well, after which she is thrown into the camp with the rest of the "animal-people." She escapes into the fairy tales her old housemaid/nanny, Greet, used to tell her, and spins stories for her friend Daniel as well.

Alternating with Krysta's story in Ravensbruck is the story of Josef Breuer in Vienna. His gardener and handyman Benjamin discovers a young woman - shorn, naked, show more beaten - and brings her to Josef, who struggles to find out where she comes from and misguidedly falls in love with her. But is Lilie - as he calls her - even real? Or is she an invention of his mind - or someone else's?

Quotes

But fear has become too familiar of a companion to act as a spur for long. (2)

"God is a human invention." (Lilie to Josef, 26)

It suddenly occurred to Josef that being left to their own devices might bot be considered a misfortune for women, but rather a period of great liberation if such a gift could be accepted. He considered what it must be like to be judged on physical appearance, to be desired on looks alone - and then, with the passing of time, to be not. (160)

"Life is hard, but knowing about other people, other civilizations, other ways of living, other places - that's your escape route, a magical journey. Once you know about these things, no matter what happens, your mind can create stories to take you anywhere you want to go....Anywhere and any-when." (Erika to Krysta, 170)

"You didn't come back."
"Sometimes people don't." He looks away. "That's what happens here." (Krysta and Daniel, 170)

"The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Fairness never comes into it." (Greet to Krysta, 201)

"Stories are fast travelers, always moving on....Oh yes, stories change with the wind and the tide and the moon. Half the time they're only plaited mist anyway, so they disappear altogether when daylight shines on them." (Greet to Krysta, 202)

"Our lives are spent seeking the person who will make us whole. We know it as bashert - that coming together with the lost half. They say when it happens the pair is lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy. Afterwards one will not be out of the other's sight even for a moment." (Hanna to Krysta, 277)

If it was possible to create objects to meet one's deepest longings, then nobody would need God. (Josef, 288)

I try to do what I've always done - escape into that secret part of me where by magic or heroism I make things turn out differently, leaving behind an automaton, a machine with no feelings whatsoever - but today I can't. A door has closed. The ideas have gone. The words aren't there. Perhaps this is what happens when you invent stories inside stories that are themselves inside a fairy tale: they become horribly real. (Krysta, 327)

....the results of the hardships we suffered did not lessen when the world grew weary of our pain, our grief and fears, our strangeness; and the worse the memory, the stronger its stranglehold on the present. We survived. We went on. It seemed enough. (337)

It's an additional torture that this generation, too, should suffer for our memories; almost impossible to find the point of balance between burdening them with the vile details and ensuring the truth is never forgotten. (339) show less

Perhaps this is what happens when you invent stories that are themselves inside a fairy tale: they become horribly real. Page 327

Joseph Breuer is a well known doctor in Vienna who comes across a patient like none other he's ever encountered. Found naked and injured, the girl claims that she is a machine and feels nothing. She has a dire warning for Joseph, a warning that concerns his family in the generations to come. Kill the monster before he destroys them all. Fast forward time and we meet yet another girl in Germany. This one is young, ignorant, and caught up in a world of stories and fairytales. Her father is also a doctor who works at a secret infirmary. Ignorant and unaware, her world becomes a nightmare when her father passes show more away and the stories are no longer a safe enough haven for her to retreat in. Two girls, separate by time and space, but connected in a horrifying and unimaginable way.

I've read a number of books about war and what war does to people. Gretel and the Dark is in part a war story but told in a way that I've never read before. The first couple of chapters took a bit of adjustment as the stories alternated between two different narrators and I had a hard time anchoring myself to the environment. Slowly, like Hansel and Gretel who are lead into the forest by a trail of crumbs, we as the readers are lead deeper and deeper into a story that is rife with darkness and the inhumanity of war and its repercussions. The human mind can be a fragile thing, but also capable of incomprehensible strength and perseverance. Through the stories of Lilie and Krysta, we also come to understand that life is not always a happily ever after. Sometimes to get to a happily ever after, if such a thing exists, evil, pain, cruelty and the lowest depths of human despair must come first. Highly recommend because it's one of those books that stay with you long after you've finished the last page. show less

Had I read Eliza Granville’s Gretel and the Dark in 2014 when it was released, it most definitely would have been on my “best of” list. As it is, I think I will probably have to include it on the 2015 list, even though it was released earlier.

Initially, one feels a bit nonplussed by this novel and all it contains. It opens with a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. The novel then moves on to 1899 Vienna, where a naked, shorn-headed, badly beaten woman with a numerical tattoo on one wrist has been taken in by a psychotherapist who both wants to help her, but also wants to claim the glory he feels he’s deserved, but has never been given. Lilie (the name he gives his new patient) insists that she is a machine, without name or show more family, who has been sent to turn-of-the century Vienna to kill the monster “Adi” before he becomes too powerful. She warns the psychotherapist that the fate of his own descendants rests upon the success of her mission. After that, the novel takes us to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where we meet young Krysta whose mother has recently committed suicide and whose father works in the facility’s “infirmary.” From that point on, readers move back and forth between the stories of Lilie and Krista.

The mix of fable, what appears to be science fiction, and Holocaust literature is demanding, draining, and seemingly disconnected, but the writing is so compelling that it pulls the reader along, even through this difficult beginning. And as one keeps reading the parallels among the three stories gradually become clearer. Not until then end of the book, though, does the reader fully understand the connections among these these narratives.

Gretel and the Dark contains a great deal of unhappiness and unkindness, but it is not without hope. Hope burns within it like a single, small candle in the middle of the darkness that is the bulk of the novel.

Eliza Granville’s ability to imagine and depict the seemingly unimaginable continually floored me. As I read, I turned the novel’s events over and over in my mind—but I also found myself wondering about the magic of fiction and the power of a truly great writer, who can create an entire world, worlds actually, and make them vivid enough for readers to temporarily live within them.

This is one of those books I know I’ll be returning to every few years both for the merits of the writing and the structure, as well as for the complex reflection it inspires. Buy it in hardback, so it will allow you multiple readings. show less

This beautiful novel by Eliza Granville blends historical fiction, magical realism, and fairy tales to tell the story of a young girl's experience of the Holocaust. I, like some other reviewers, had some trouble getting into it at the beginning, but it was well worth the effort, and once I got over the hump I found myself completely unable to put it down. Granville does a beautiful job leaving the reader trying to figure out how the story will come together, and balancing what feels like a mystery with the bleakness of the scenes of the horrors of the concentration camp, which are all the more stirring because they are shown through the eyes of a child. A truly excellent novel.

Another dream-like, fairy tale, horror story of World War II -- I seem to be drowning in them lately. I found this one to be both more horrible and more of a slog than most -- partially because of the subject matter, partially because I did not really like any of the characters. It's well enough, but it doesn't touch on the glory of Jane Yolen's Briar Rose -- a holocaust fairy tale that haunts me 15 years after reading it.

Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville is a wonderful atmospheric and haunting novel which is written in two linked narratives. I love this type of story as it is imaginative and edgy and a real page turner.

Set in Vienna in 1899 Joseph Breuer is a Pyschoanalyst and has a new case on his hands when a young woman is found in the streets with shaven head, starved and naked, unable to establish her origins and with very little communication aprart from her insitance that she is a machine with no feelings. Joseph sets out on finding out the truth about this girl and names her Lilie.

In another time and another place a child by the name of Krysta, whos father is working in the infirmary with the "animal people" spends her days listening to the show more gruesone fairytales of kitchenworker Greet until suddenly her life changes and she is faced with gruesome tales of her own.
I really enjoyed this dark and haunting novel. I loved the vivid settings of this historical story and found myself totally drawn into the novel. It did take me a couple of chapters to settle into the book and to get a grasp on the characters but when I did I was both moved and delighted with the imaginative and unique storytelling of Eliza Granville.
The characters are so well written and you really do get a wonderful sense of time and place and also a sense of fear that runs through the story right to the end.

Quote from Gretel and the Dark
Books; I repeat, for they've not only been a solace during the long years but also provided the keys to understanding other people's ideas and achievements, their hopes and fears, quirks and foibles, their dreams.....their demons"

The story is both moving and disturbing and I found the fairy tales told within the story to be well excuted as well as vivid and eerie.
This is a very powerful and memorable novel and the stroy is told in beautiful prose.

I think readers who enjoyed books like the The Snow Child will really enjoy this dark tale.

My thanks to Penguin Books for an Advance Reading Copy of this novel in return for an honest unbiased review. show less

I thought this book was pretty much okay, a 3 star book until I got to the ending. The ending bumped it up. This is one of those books that are worth reading until the last page. So, so good. There is some gruesomeness in the book (But it takes place in WWII so I think that's to be expected), and some of it is hard to read, but overall it is one that will keep you thinking and you'll blink at the end and wonder what you had just read. I definitely recommend this book. 4.5 out of 5 stars. Brilliant.