Review of Lilac Girls

Review of Lilac Girls

Last year I vowed to not read another historical fiction novel set in World War II—most especially focused on Nazi concentration camps. Melancholy would linger for days after finishing these books, and I would struggle to shake it. The thought of what so many prisoners experienced at the hands of pure evil never fails to wreck me.

Then a friend of mine told me I just had to read Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly, and her enthusiasm overrode my weak sensibilities. It has a 4.5 Amazon rating with over 22,000 reviews! That’s a well-loved novel. I even purchased the paperback, which is unusual for me. Although I would prefer to read a “real” book over an ebook any day, I’m cheap—or frugal, as my husband prefers, so I rarely splurge on the paperback.

On the beautiful cover of Lilac Girl,s an endorsement reads, “Extremely moving and memorable…should appeal strongly to [readers of] Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.” —Library Journal

I have never read Anthony Doerr’s novel, but I am a fan of Kristin Hannah. In fact, The Nightingale was the first book of hers I read. This has a 4.7 Amazon rating with over 331,000 reviews—and over a million on Goodreads. That’s mind blowing! If you’re not familiar with it, the setting is World War II France, and the Nightingale was the code name for a young French girl who helped Jews escape when Hitler’s army invaded her country. Very Well done, as is evident from her readers’ responses.

Another stand out book set in World War II is the non-fiction book by Corrie ten Boom—The Hiding Place. This has a 4.8 Amazon rating with over 20,000 reviews. It’s all the grittier and more disturbing because the characters were not fictional. It’s a beautiful story of faith and sacrifice, and well worth the read.

Back to Lilac Girls. Just as Corrie ten Boom’s book is based on real-life characters, the same is true for Martha Hall Kelly’s book. Yet, it’s fictional. I believe she had to take a lot of creative liberties when fleshing out the story.

The first half of Lilac Girls sets up the three main characters, each with a point of view within the novel, and plops them into the action. First is Caroline Ferriday. She was a New York socialite (and former Broadway actress) who was a liaison to the French Consulate. There were many other real people built around Caroline, which made her POV fun to read.

Next is Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager. She acts as a courier once to help with the cause and ends up getting herself, her sister, and her mother thrown into Ravensbrück, the women’s Nazi concentration camp.

The third character is Herta Oberheuser, a young doctor who is hired to work in Ravensbrück—a male-dominated field. There is a very short span of time in the story that I have a small amount of sympathy for this character, but it passes quickly.

It was extremely difficult for me to read the first part of this novel. Kasia and her sister are both thrown into the unthinkable when they become victims of the horrendous experimental surgeries the Nazi’s did to their victims—the Rabbits, as they were called.

The second half focused on what happened after we won the war, and how Kasia and her sister are taken under Caroline Ferriday’s wing. Much easier to stomach, although the dark effects of being tortured continued to plague the victims. How could it not?

I had only one pet peeve, and most readers probably wouldn’t even notice. In Caroline’s point of view (especially), the characters continually used each other’s names when speaking, even though there was no one else in the scene. She didn’t do this in the other points of view, so I’m not sure why it was an issue here.

If you can stomach the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps, and you enjoy good writing, you will love this book. Although it’s not in the Christian genre, it is fairly clean. There is only one scene that somewhat crossed a boundary, and I’m not convinced it was necessary to the story.

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter