The Choice Isn't Always Easy

Some books stay in your mind and heart for years. You find yourself recommending them to friends. You find yourself re-reading them. Others are enjoyable, but forgettable. The story may keep you up way too late (yes, that happened to me last night) and yet, you can recognize the flaws in the story even as you are reading.

Recently, I read Ann Hood's new book, "The Red Thread". It is about six American couples who adopt baby girls from China through an agency called "The Red Thread." However, it is equally about the heartbroken and courageous Chinese mothers who have no choice but to give up their beloved infant girls. It was a solid, good book. There was nothing wrong with it. I enjoyed it very much and would recommend it to anyone. However...several years ago I read "Digging to America" by Anne Tyler, which is about two very different types of American families who meet at the airport while waiting to meet the little girls they have adopted from Korea. I loved this book! I loved the two families, who shared nothing except the adoption of these babies. I loved learning about the Iranian customs Tyler describes; I could almost taste the tea that grandmother Miriam brewed. I could feel how uncomfortable Jin-Ho Donaldson was with her Korean name.

Perhaps Hood tried to do too much by telling twelve stories within this fairly brief novel. Perhaps I just felt so disgusted by some of the Americans that I couldn't bear to see them acquiring these children. Tyler, however, doesn't flinch when she shows her her characters' flaws and weaknesses. Yet, I never once doubted that these two couples were loving, deserving parents to their daughters.

I also recently read two historical fiction books, "The Kommandant's Girl" by Pam Jenoff and "Purge" by Sofi Oksanen. I have read another of Jenoff's books and have her third waiting for me. So, I really do like her writing. But...things just go way too easily for the Jewish heroine, Emma, who poses as a Catholic, Anna, and finds work as an assistant for the German Kommandant in occupied Poland during World War II. Even the Gestapo isn't very frightening in this book! And while I understand Emma escaping from the ghetto, I do not understand how she seems to ignore her imprisoned parents for the greater part of the story.

Oksanen's book, "Purge", tells so many stories and takes the reader into so many painful places that it could be difficult for some to read. For me, however, this is the way we can all learn about the horrific events in history that shaped those from behind the Iron Curtain. Two women, Aliida and Zara, meet. They are suspicious, as all Estonians must be. We learn about Aliida's painful, almost unbearable past, and we learn that such horrors are still happening to women in the present, through Zara's story.

Some years ago I visited what I consider to be the best museum in the world, "The House of Terror", in Budapest. The story of the victimization of Hungarians by both the Nazis and the Soviet Union is told in a simple, yet chilling, way. Every item I saw at that museum has stayed in my mind. That is how I feel about many of the scenes in "Purge".

For me, there is always time enough to read two, or three, or three dozen books on any given topic. But for many, a choice is necessary. While you will enjoy "The Red Thread", you will remember and be touched by "Digging to America." While you might stay up late to finish "The Kommandant's Girl", as I did, you will feel and be haunted by Aliida's and Zara's victimization in "Purge."