Author: Louise Murphy
First Published: 2003
Contains spoilers
The blurb: A poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale set in a war-torn world, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones, and Lilac Girls
In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel." They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called a "witch" by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children. Louise Murphy's haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children.
The review: This came onto my radar when I read that there was a vampire aspect and there is, sort of, as I’ll explain. However, that aspect is just a detail almost and, for consistency, this perhaps should have been an Honourable Mention but it is just so poignant I wanted to give the book a full review.
The book tracks the events surrounding two young Jewish children in Nazi occupied Poland. Their father has been able to survive due to his engineering skills and, as the book begins, we see him on a motorbike, fleeing with the children in a sidecar and their stepmother riding behind him. However, they are being pursued by three Nazis. He manages to stop out of sight and sends the children into the forest but not before the stepmother gives them new names, Germanic and not Jewish, Hansel and Gretel.
The children, like in the fairy-tale, find the house of a witch – though this is no wicked witch but a wise woman who supplies the nearby village with cures and acts as midwife. Nevertheless, they all refer to her as a witch. She decides to protect the children, gets them false documents and the book follows their story and that of the parents who escape and fall in with the partisans.
The vampirism comes in the form of an SS Oberführer who is looking for children to “eindeutschung” – children who display Aryan traits, who will be stolen from their parents and sent to Germany to be made German. Whilst there he sees Magda’s niece Nelka, recently given birth and has a ‘look’ he feels to be Aryan. They kidnap her baby and force her to comply with letting him take her blood for transfusions (her blood type matches his). When asked why, he replies “The idea came to me from my days as an athlete. Sometimes transfusions were given to increase energy during the last Olympic games. Your blood will refresh me and serve a higher purpose.” He suggests her blood will help him remain strong and she is not the first he has done this to. It is almost acting like a vampire, though the stealing of blood is by scientific means of drawing it out by needle. Needless to say he is unaware that there is some Roma in her ancestry.
It is a detail within the story, though the fact that he is holding the baby causes the finale to move in certain ways. It adds an extra layer of monstrousness to a character who is drawn entirely without sympathy, and rightly so. Whilst the story follows the Hansel and Gretel story closely there is nothing supernatural in this but the book is incredibly well written and harrowing as a horror, but it is the horror of fascism and the holocaust. A must read. 8.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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