In 2003, a postcard is received with four names on it, and no return address. The four names are four members of a Jewish family whose lives were torn apart by the Holocaust. Years later, Anne is pregnant, and on bed rest, as her mother tells her the story of their family, her grandparents and their struggle to survive as the hatred against their kind rises and WW2 breaks out. She remembers the postcard, and how it’s mystery affected their family. She decides to find out who sent the card, and in the process, learn more of her own family history, the stories of the names of her ancestors on the card.

This book is translated from the French, and has been hugely popular in it’s home country and in translation. In a way it’s an odd book. The events in it and the people, the history, are all real, but it’s fictionalised or made to read like a novel. Perhaps parts of the story are filled in to make the story flow, I’m not sure. There are diary like entries, novel like histories and stories, and some letters and emails.

Perhaps it goes without saying that the history and stories of a family that were decimated by the Holocaust and it’s aftermath is not an easy read. It’s a dark part of world history and because it’s a personal story as well, you can’t get away from the pain and suffering caused that echoes through generations. It’s truly tragic and heartbreaking.

But that said, it’s a smooth read. I found one chapter sliding into each other, and while there was pain and horror, there was also love and humanity in the story. There are little family adventures and dramas, as well as the bigger strokes of their lives and what happens to them. There’s the bitterness of some of the family not being able to see that war was coming, that what was happening in Germany was going to happen in France, but also the understanding that they could not have known. That there was a lot of smoke and mirrors and lies told. There’s an innocence there. It’s quite beautiful, and I wanted to know what happened to everyone. And there was always the thread running through it of the mystery around the postcard.

There’s also the reminder that racism or anti-semitism never really goes away, and Anne’s exploration in the present of her Jewish identity and what that means to her, what others think that should mean, was an interesting part of this story as well.

This one was not always an easy read, but I liked it both as a family document, (I love family stories that get passed down or the things families don’t speak about), and as the story of an anonymous postcard that leads a woman into the past of her Jewish family and their stories of survival and also of their tragic deaths.

Read It If: this one is sad, but it’s also at times beautiful and a story of a family and of a mystery.

With thanks to PGC Books for the copy of this book for review.