Release date: March 22nd 2011
Age group: Young adult
Pages: 344
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car,
Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
Well damn. This was definitely an unexpected treasure. Ruta Sepetys has certainly written a powerful novel. Filled with complex characters and at times quite horrific occurrences, this is one that's sure to stick in your mind for quite a while after turning the last page. Here's what I loved:
1) Lina. A lot of the time while reading teen fiction, I find it incredibly hard to cope with the female lead. There's the melodramatic, the weak (always in need of a male rescuer), and the overly nice (to the point of boring the readership). But Lina? Oh, definitely not. Lina is strong, and stubborn and she speaks her mind. Sure, sometimes it gets her in trouble, but she's confident and has hope under terrible circumstances, and I admire that about her.
2) The blunt writing style. Don't get me wrong, I do love some beautifully and poetically written prose, but the simplicity of the language/ writing really works for me in this novel. It does a great job to enhance the grim events Lina and her family undergo, with a bluntness that seems to want to entrap you in the story, and that it certainly does.
3) One of the Russian guards, Kretzsky. He's probably one of, if not the most complex character Ruta Sepetys has crafted in this novel. Misunderstood, and fairly misjudged, Kretzsky is a man of confusion and self doubt. And although I do not love his character, I do love his complexity and the manner in which he's portrayed.
4) What it teaches the readership. This novel teaches us of human suffering and endurance. It teaches us to believe in the unexpected and that there's always hope. It teaches us to have courage, and of small acts of kindness under immense hardships. To lose ourselves in music and art and words.
Buy the book:
Ruta Sepetys has written a truly brave and important novel. A novel that will, I promise, keep you up at night with an urgency to want what comes next.
