Spring Break Reading Machine

I did not go anywhere for spring break.  :(

But, I am managing to get in a ton of reading!  I just devoured a book called Margot by Jillian Cantor, which I'm going to write about today.  Normally, historical fiction is not my preferred genre.  But I've read several other books by Cantor recently and really enjoy her writing.  So much so, that I downloaded Margot to my Kindle without even reading the book description.

Here's a short synopsis: Margot is Margot Frank, the sister of the beloved Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank in case you didn't know).  The book imagines that she didn't actually die in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust, but instead escaped, was helped by a nun and an old friend of her mother's, and ends up living in Philadelphia, PA as an adult.  She lives in secret though, changing her name to Margie Franklin and keeping her past hidden from everyone she comes in contact with.  She disguises herself as a Gentile and finds an office secretary job.  Eventually though, her sister's diary is published and then is made into a movie.  After that, the demons of the Holocaust experience return with a vengeance to haunt her.

I really, really liked this book, despite it being historical fiction.  Like I mentioned earlier, the writing was great.  Here is an example of a line I really enjoyed: "You have to love someone to yell at them so intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet's Sputnik I've read so much about" (Cantor location 721).  I love the simile and the repetition at the beginning of each phrase.  Plain 'ol good writing!

The one qualm I had with this book was that Margot Frank did die in the concentration camp.  She died of Typhus.  Pretending that she didn't die and lived this new life in America bothered me a little bit.  You can't change the past.  I know Cantor was just imagining what her life might have been like, but I still can't get past the moral feeling that it was just a little wrong.  Imagine how her father might feel reading this book?  He was the only one in their family who survived the Holocaust and I think reading something like this might just bring back the pain even more.  Something to think about for sure.