Book review
Ruta taught us that sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.
The eye opening 344 paged novel Between Shades of Gray was written by Ruta Sepetys and was published in 2011 but set in 1941. The novel was written in first person, in the perspective of a 15 year old Lithuanian teenage girl named Lina. The composer of the novel was reliable, as the novel was based on a true event, making it easy to access contextual information about the event. Furthermore, Sepetys travelled to the jails of the victims experiencing the trauma personally, while meeting and learning experiences with victims and family of victims. Sepetys personally has connections with the event that took place in the book, as her father was a son of a Lithuanian officer. The novel was set in Lithuania, specifically Kaunas a city in the south-central. The settings had a major influence on the plot because based on the location, specific events took place that needed to be accurate, as the novel was made to recreate true events. She depicts several themes in the novel such as family, fear, and love based on the Soviet Occupation of Baltic States, specifically Lithuania. Through these themes, the truth behind the monstrous and hidden truth about the event was revealed. The novel was written to speak for those who were told to remain quiet about the truth or their lives would be endangered, making it known to the world what the year 1941 was like.
Between Shades of Gray was a novel written in the genre of historical fiction. Between Shades of Gray being unflinchingly horrendous and emotionally wrecking, the novel is worth reading.
Have you ever wondered what a human life was worth? A question we all think we know the answer to but guaranteed will be altered after reading this novel. Sepetys did an indescribable job through her words that were specifically developed by the frightening experiences that she had encountered while studying the context of the soviet union and divulging secrets that were supposed to remain unknown and hidden. The context of the book, specifically the setting allowed the novel to reveal the horror and inhumane influences that occurred during the time, through the cruelty that children and adults endured from Stalin and his men while fighting for their survival during the Soviet
Ruta Sepetys, Author
Occupation of Baltic States. The book focuses on Lina’s life and how it was suddenly changed forever because of one night and one man. Her family and her experience horrifying conditions where genocide became considered normal. I was incapable of placing the book down as soon as I read “they took me in my nightgown,” intrigued by the novel and how it illuminates the overlooked history and the misery caused by one man and his soldiers. Not only is the novel intriguing but thoroughly educational to readers about the history of Lithuania and Lithuanians. I had the pleasure of reading not only a book that educated me thoroughly, through a teenage girl’s perspective but the rollercoaster of emotions experienced, as I grew emotionally attached to Lina and her appalling life. Between Shades of Gray is an incomparable novel that obligates you as a reader to experience emotions that have on no account been expressed before. It was the most worthwhile novel I have ever read where education, violence, family and art were expressed like never before, through the detail and sophisticated vocabulary Sepetys used. A must read for adolescents!
-by E Fozi, Year 12