March 23, 2015

Diana's Reviews! Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys


It's 1941 and fifteen-year-old artist Lina Vilkas is on Stalin's extermination list. Deported to a prison camp in Siberia, Lina fights for her life, fearless, risking everything to save her family. It's a long and harrowing journey and it is only their incredible strength, love, and hope that pull Lina and her family through each day. But will love be enough to keep them alive?


If I say that I loved this book, it probably wouldn’t do it justice. If I say that every page was written in such a way I felt like I was one of the characters, it would be too little.
I loved this beautiful story from the first chapter and I know it will have a special place in my heart from now on. 

I was attracted by the synopsis. Those few sentences made me curious, made me wonder what kind of world existed sixty, seventy years ago. Everyone goes to school and listens to their History teacher talking about wars, but there are so many things we don’t know. This story is one of them.

Lina is a fifteen-year old Lithuanian girl who wants to be an artist. She lives a happy life with her mother, her father and her little brother, Jonas. But like every other thing, all is about to change when the Soviets burst into their home and take them because they are on the lists made by Stalin of those he considered anti-Soviets. They are separated from their father, and the three of them are forced to travel into a crowded dirty train car. The men are forced to go to prisons. The women and their children are taken to Siberia. 

The train bears the name of ‘Thieves and Prostitutes’ while there are lawyers, teachers, librarians, mothers and small children taken from their warm homes, put into a dirty train car where they have to spend the next few weeks until they arrive at the destination. Of course, Siberia is nothing better. They have to work more than tweleve hours per day only to receive 300 grams of dried bread. Their guards, the NKVD, are so cuel, I wanted to slap them with the book while reading it. They don’t care that people are dying all around them, they only want them to suffer. 

“But how can they just decide that we're animals? They don't even know us," I said.
"We know us," said Mother. "They're wrong. And don't ever allow them to convince you otherwise. Do you understand?” 

Lina is such a strong character. I thought a bit of what would I do if I were to be in her place and came up with nothing. Many of us would give up hope and think death is a better option, but she wanted desperately to live.

“Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?”

She documents her entire experience, writes letters to her father, draws and hides them into a jar, hoping that one day someone will discover them and the world will know the truth. 
I was impressed by these characters – they stuck together, they didn’t let each other down, and they had an incredible will to live.

I recall I read an interview with Ruta Sepetys, and there she told us to ask ourselves “Would I survive?”. I, for one, don’t think I would. Because the world has changed. Those characters were so kind, so willing to help each other despite the awful condition they were put in. Because you appreciate something only after you lose it. Those people lost their freedom. They lost it, and after more than a decade when those who survived came back, they weren’t able say a thing about what happened to them. 

“But all of the survivors had one thing in common, and that was love. They survived through love. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.”

I think there are so many thing we take for granted. Freedom is the most important, and this book demonstrates this. I am so glad I had the chance to read Between Shades of Gray. After finishing it, I wanted to go out and scream at the top of my lungs ‘I’m free’.


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