A short, direct, semi-autobiographical book about the author and her family trying to elude roundups in the Netherlands. It’s a very short book, but it doesn’t need a lot of words to convey the worry, dismay, and danger. When I began reading it, I felt trepidation because I knew what was going to happen, but the characters didn’t, especially the author’s parents. They still believed they would be safe. I’d highly recommend it for first time readers of Holocaust literature or someone just wanting to get a cursory look at the dangers of being Jewish in Europe during WWII.

Going into reading this I was, much like the narrator of the story, naïve and somewhat oblivious to what it was I was really reading. Yes, I knew what the book was about, a young girl surviving the Nazi occupation of Holland and the Holocaust by fleeing out the back door when the Germans came for her family. She is the only member to survive, she did this by hiding in different places throughout the war.
It was the way the book is written that threw me off at first. There is a very simplistic, naïve, child-like quality to the writing, almost as if the child is writing in her diary. The Holocaust and the war itself are never directly mentioned, the child simply and plainly relates events happening to her and her family in the narration. The reader is plainly aware of what is transpiring, whereas the child is somewhat oblivious to the big picture of war and it's repercussions except in how it pertains to her own life. This innocent, naïve, childlike quality makes the story even more horrific to the reader. She is the only member of her family to survive.
The author Marga Minco was in her 20s when she wrote this, the girl narrator is around 14 when the story begins. Though not a true autobiography the story parallels the author's life in many ways. The novel was published in 1957 and a year later Minco received a prestigious award, making her one of the best known Dutch post-war writers. It became required reading for high schools in the Netherlands. Some of the chapters were published as standalone pieces in literary magazines.
Minco said in her award acceptance speech, "I would have preferred not to have had a reason to write "Bitter Herbs"".
A straight forward account of an innocent girl's view of the war, I give this 5 stars and feel everyone should read.
Thank you to Independent Publishers Group Ebury Press and NetGalley for the free ARC of this novel, I am leaving my honest review in return.

Bitter Herbs is a short semi-autobiographical series of recollections of the WW2 years by Marga Minco who was a young woman in occupied Holland during the war. Originally released in 1957, this reformat and re-release from Penguin on their Ebury Press imprint, it's 128 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.

Despite the inevitable comparisons with The Diary of Anne Frank, in a lot of ways this account (with which I was previously unfamiliar) moved and saddened me even more. That's possibly because I read the former when I was a young child and assimilated it before it had the power to horrify me as an adult. There's so much sub-context in this short retelling which is not explicitly written down; the holocaust is not directly referenced, for example. It's the small day-to-day facts of life which are so heartbreakingly retold here which have the power to dismay and shock more than 75 years on. There's a quiet pervasive matter-of-fact sadness to the whole which made this a difficult read for me.

The English translation work by Jeannette K. Ringold is very well done and seamless and manages to capture the guilelessness and unapologetic directness of the original very well.

This would be a good selection for school or public library acquisition, book study groups, classroom units in modern history, holocaust, WW2, and related subjects.

Four stars. Difficult but important reading.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

I have studied the Holocaust for years and read many books on the subject. It never never fails to move me when such stories as this one are told. The story of a young Dutch girl, also a Jew, and her life during a despicable time is quite poignant.

My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book via Net Galley.

This was a very quick read. I thought the detail that the author went into of that time was interesting. It is such a harrowing story. I got the sense of confusion and hope from the main character. The sense of wanting to believe that everything was going to be okay. Maybe it was just the translation, but some of the writing was stilted.

This book was a really fast read! I loved the characters and I loved the story of this family! It made me so sad when they knew that they would be leaving their home and were giving their belongings away. I can't imagine having that be a reality.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ebury Press, & Independent Publishers Group for the opportunity to read and review this book before it's publication date! This in no way affected my review, opinions are my own.

I can definitely understand why this was so heavily lauded in the 1957 after it was originally published, but I think understanding that this autobiographical novel was more so a collection of short stories that was put in chronological order would have set my expectations in the right direction from the get-go. After I realized this, I went back through and re-read certain stories again, and viewing them as independent of one another (while still collectively making up the whole) worked much better for me.

These stories were written by the author in her early 20s while recounting the Holocaust that took place during her mid to late teens, and the heartbreaking simplicity of the individual stories was so well done. Put into a historical lens, there were some things that didn't make sense (i.e. a Jewish teenager takes a train from Amersfoort to Amsterdam [25mi/49km] without showing any papers or being questioned/hassled sometime in the 1940s), but I don't think it's meant to make sense to anyone but the author.

I would recommend this to anyone, even those that don't typically find themselves reading WWII fiction.

A beautifully written book. Absolutely wonderful read and can’t wait for more by this author. Thanks to publisher and NetGalley for ARC.

"They aren't doing anything to us." Talk about laden with meaning! Set in Holland, the narrator describes her family's experiences during WWII when the Nazis come. As is noted in the book, this is not exactly an autobiography but based on the author's life.

What stands out most to me is the innocence, particularly when the family members happily sew yellow stars onto their coats, blissfully unaware of what lies ahead. At least some of them are. The adults including an older brother have an inkling and realize something very wrong is happening but I wonder to what extent in the early stage. The quote above is what the father tells his family when they see soldiers in the streets at the beginning of the war. Then entire families begin to disappear and the family relocates. Only one member escapes. The simplicity is gut wrenching.

Though very short, this book is profound and impactful. It would be an excellent and important story for children as well as adults to read. There are no graphic details, adult situations or offensive language. I have read well over one hundred fiction and nonfiction books on the topic and am moved every single time and was with this as well.

My sincere thank you to Independent Publishers Group and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this book which was written in 1957, translated from Dutch into English. I am so glad she wrote this sweet yet chilling (as we know the outcome) book.