100 Word Book Review:

Based on a true story, a powerful evocation of everyday horrors of life as a concentration camp prisoner. In the worst circumstances, there is no excuse for pessimism. In the test of extremes, being positive is still a choice. And even in hell, love can be found. The unspoken horrors of what humans are capable of reveal the unbreakable strength of what the human body can endure, physically and emotionally. This illuminates humanity greatest strength: Hope. Towards the end even with liberation, there are myriad of aftereffects and scars that will be etched and cast forever in this lifetime, permanently.

Who should read:

What is true love? To answer this question, reading this book might be a good start to it. While it will not give the full complete answer to the question, it captures the essential fundamental definition of love. Anyone in mood to read a love story, this is a good short book that is based on actual events.

No doubt it is a positive ending, the book gives a comprehensive coverage after the story ends. In this way, readers get to know what happens after that. It somewhats give a closure, a full picture of what happens after in the real. Unlike other romance stories, this is the real love story that brings tears and smiles.

Who should NOT read:

Perhaps the survivors of concentration camps or anyone who is not in the mood for romance stories in rough times. Not forgetting the faint hearts who cannot stand reading the gruelsome human experiments in camps. It is horrifying and shocking, almost like reading the proof of a living hell. It is painful, and hard to accept that humans as sentinels, can bring themselves to perform such cruel acts according to one’s volition.

Takeaway points:

Love is simple, love is sweet. It is what one can do for the other, in good and bad times. Love is not fair, never fair, and it is not a transaction of this for that, or to have a partner at someone’s beck or call. It is an eternal promise to each other, to pamper and care mutually, to converse casually in daily events, to have mutual support and rapport even in the simplest thing that one does not agree at all.

Where can we find love? In all places, in all ways. Which in this case, it is in the concentration camp, where it is almost the last place where love can be found. Yet, Lale and Gita proved us wrong. Love was found.

Personally, I really love this book, and I am glad that I picked this title. It reminded of my happier days. A good and easy book to read when I was travelling alone.

About the Author

Heather Morris is an Australian writer and social work administrator. For several years, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in the US.

In 2003, Heather was introduced to an elderly man who ‘might just have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives, as their friendship grew and he embarked on a journey on self-scrutiny, entrusting the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her. Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay – which ranked high in international competitions – before reshaping it into her debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz.