Lilac Girls

I could not finish Lilac Girls. A little background: the three protagonists are Carolina, an American socialite whiling away the years in a plum positions in the French consulate; Herta, an ambitious doctor with a dark past who accepts a post in Ravensbrück to advance her career; and Kasia, a naïve Polish teenager who joins the Polish resistance for love and for excitement. Their paths begin to intersect when Kasia is arrested and shipped to Ravensbrückalong with a goodly number of those she knows. 

Lilac Girls is beautifully written, the characters well-developed and sympathetic (yes, even Nazi doctor Herta). It’s a visceral, moving story. And therein lay the problem. At the end of the day, I simply didn’t want to read anymore horrors, real or embellished or otherwise. Enough terrible things fill our newspapers and news feeds for me to force myself through a book, thoughtfully written and engaging or no. That’s not a criticism of the author or her work, and I’m certainly not recommending against reading it. But me, today, I need lighter fair, words that feed the spirit rather than ravage it.