The Postcard by Anne Berest

 genre: historical fiction

When a postcard arrives at the Berest family home, Anne and her family don't know what to make of it: on one side, a picture of the Opéra Garnier in Paris and on the other, four names. But these aren't just any four names, they are the names of Anne's maternal great-grandparents and their two children, all of whom were killed at Auschwitz.  When Anne determines to try and solve the mystery of who sent the postcard, she ends up on a journey into her family's past, deep into the layers of secrets that can be buried when one's own family has been nearly wiped from off the earth.  

I couldn't stop thinking about this book. It is so well written, like a mystery where we are learning along with Anne the genealogy of her own people.  Different documents give us clues and we understand how lives can be pieced together from small details that have been left behind.  I found myself so engaged in the unraveling and I particularly appreciated the way this book has, like no other book I've read in recent memory, made me engage in the hard truths of intergenerational trauma and how just because one survives something doesn't mean that the devastation of the loss can ever be okay.  I appreciated how Anne takes a hard look at the French people, both those who helped and those who let themselves be lulled into the kind of concern that maybe feels something but does nothing.  I have read so very much about World War 2 and yet the description here about Paris in the immediate aftermath of the war's end was the most poignant and powerful one I've ever read, making me think about practicalities and realities in a new and painful way.

When I finished this book I had goosebumps and actual tears in my eyes.  There is such much here about how gravely important our personal histories are, how a family or society's collective memories shape us even if no one ever speaks words about them to us.  It is a current and yet timeless story about family and culture and Jewishness and bigotry and history and shared trauma and by the end it absolutely blew me away.  

content warning: some adult scenes but nothing super graphic