Between Shades Of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Between Shades of Gray
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Genre: Historical Fiction
Date: 23 August 2021
Rating: 4 stars
Review: We are back to normal programming and I am back to reading historical fiction. Can I say that I enjoyed the change of pace? To be frank, ‘enjoy’ is absolutely, definitely not the right word for this instance.
Between Shade of Gray is based on stories of survivors of the genocide on Baltic people during the Second World War and follows a fifteen-year-old, Lithuanian girl, Lina. Lina, along with her entire family, is picked up from her home and taken away from the comfortable lifestyle she has always known. They are stuffed into filthy trains with hordes of other deportees like them and taken to a worse camp in Siberia where they are forced to do manual labour for poor rations. As she fights the horrible conditions that she is faced with, Lina finds solace in her art and hopes that one day her father, who was separated from the rest of the family, finds them by following her paintings.
The story is heartbreaking and in parts difficult to read. It is about the struggles of a group of people made to face hardships for no fault of their own. But the story is also about hope. Lina says she wants to live, she wants to see her brother grow up and she wants to see Lithuania once again, even when death seemed like an easier option.
Apart from being the story of this one family, Sepetys writes the story of a country taken as spoils of war and rid of their own people. She talks about a movement in a country where people faced risks but did not give up on their idea of their country. As much as it is about the torture that Lithuanians faced at the hands of the Russians, with Kretsky’s story we see a glimpse of the other side and how one act of kindness can change the course of someone’s life. Between Shades of Gray is also a heart-wrenching story about love for family and love found in darkness because it is her love for Andrius and her father that keeps Lina going when she is heaving logs in the Arctic Night.
There is a lot of mention about art in this novel because Lina finds comfort in her drawings and attempts to chronicle the story of her family’s deportation in them in secrecy. But it is the mentions of the artist Edward Munch and his idea of finding beauty in death, destruction and depression that really push the themes of the story forward. That is what the reader is forced to do while reading Sepetys’ novel: find beauty while she describes horrific situations.
I was told that the book would make me cry and like you would expect from a book that comes with the said disclaimer this book was filled with emotional scenes one after the other. The first book that comes to mind when talking about this genre is A Little Life. Anyone who knows me knows that I have MULTIPLE problems with this book. While I came close to it during the Christmas scenes, the book failed to make me cry and I am almost glad it did. Unlike, Hanya Yanagihara’s book where the emotional scenes are written with a certain kind of manipulation to force tears, this book is written with honesty that makes you angry more than sentimental. This was one of the things that I really appreciated about the writing.
In general, World War II is my favourite period to read about while reading historical fiction and this book did not disappoint. It would have been a 5-star read for me if the author would have ended it differently. I get what she was trying to achieve with the ambiguous- epilogue-ish- ending but those kinds of endings never satisfy me. After going through this long arduous journey with Lina I wanted to see it through and I was a little disappointed when it didn’t happen.
The book introduced me to a chapter in history that I had very little idea about and makes me want to pick up Sepetys’ other books, too.