I've been dipping into a really wonderful nonfiction read lately. It seems weird to say I'm enjoying it as it concerns young adults dealing with the trauma of war, but I am finding it an engrossing book despite the dark subject matter. Edited by Sarah Wallis and Svetlana Palmer, We Were Young and at War looks at youths from all sides of the conflict and weaves their stories together letting them speak for themselves through their diaries and letters. What strikes me most is how articulate these young people were, how aware they were of what was going on yet they tried to lead lives as normal as possible and most especially how they adapted to an increasingly forbidding world. I don't want to say a lot about the book as I do want to write about it at greater length when I finish, but I wanted to share a couple of passages to give you a taste of what I've been reading.
Taken from the diary of Edward Niesobski who was sixteen at the time the war broke out in Poland. Edward fled east with his father when the Germans attacked.
22 September 1939
"The city doesn't look like there is a war on; it's back to normal. Schools have been open again since 11 September. There are lots of German posters on the walls and Hitler's flags all over. I feel like a stranger in my own country. There's not much food in Lodz and people spend hours queuing for potatoes. We walk from Lodz to Kalisz."
23 September 1939
"We spend the night at the train station with 300 other people, waiting for a train which never comes. It finally arrives at about 3 p.m. It moves very slowly and I can see the wrecks of burned-out trains, and some freshly repaired bridges. We reach Kalisz at 8 p.m., where we wait for an hour. From there, we go straight on to Ostrow. At 3.30 a.m., after three weeks on the move, I am back home. Everything is just as we left it, because our aunt lived there while we were away. The first thing we do is have a bath. You can imagine what we looked like at the end of our 'adventure'!"
It amazes me what humans are capable of--both good and bad. And I'm amazed at how these young people could just drop everything and help defend their country so very willingly. There is an Epilogue at the end of the book, which gives the outcome of each diarists' life. I've read the first couple, but I have a feeling this part of the book may be heart wrenching, so I think I will leave the epilogue for last.
I'm not sure what else I'll be reading this weekend. I've started the Slaves next read, Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, so I expect I'll spend a little time with that as well. I read it several years back, but I think I'm going to enjoy it as much this time around as I did the first. I might even manage to complete Carl's RIP Challenge (though the books I've ended up reading aren't the same ones I choose initially). If I count Susan Hill's book and Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry I think I might just make it (I've already finished Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and am one story away from completing Don't Look Now: Selected Stories of Daphne du Maurier)so maybe I'm not doing as badly as I thought. I'm thoroughly enjoying Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and am wondering why I waited so long to pick up one of her books.
I've plenty of other books to choose from--whatever catches my fancy really, though I admit I'm still eying a couple of books by Daphne du Maurier and then I found myself contemplating my pile of mystery novels. The thing is I need something completely unputdownable at the moment--totally plot-driven to keep my attention riveted (something fictional by the way). I'm trying hard to concentrate on the books already in front of me, but you know how that goes sometimes. I'm just not able to focus very long on one book at the moment, and that's okay--I'll get out of this phase sooner or later. Until then my search for good reads continues.
What are you reading this weekend?