This is a really haunting book to read, it is so hard to believe that such depravity went on in this world for so long, this book brings to life the story of one young girl and her experience after being sent to Auschwitz. Fourteen year old Catholic Czeslawa lives in a small village in Poland with her Mother and Father, she is a typical young girl who is interested in a young boy who picks her up on his motorcycle for rides. Her life turns upside down when the Nazi's invade Poland and transports thousands and thousands of people to various places depending on how useful they may be to the German regime. Czeslawa and her family are sent to Auschwitz, her father is separated from them, her mom and her survive the initial selection process, are stripped of all their belongings, tattooed, have their hair shorn and photographed by another prisoner. It's this photo, that's on the book cover, that inspired the author to find out what happened to this young girl. Life in Auschwitz is hell, fed small portions of rotten food, worked for long hours, made to stand for hours on end, disease is rampant and guards are more likely to kill you for sport rather than help you. The author includes footnotes where she got her information, if you have read any books that have touched on the Holocaust then you are probably familiar with many of the acts the Nazis carried out against the people of Poland, some of them are mentioned. A very slim novel but I feel a very important one in the literature around WW2 and the Holocaust. I would highly recommend especially if you have an interest in that time period. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Liveright for the ARC.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have seen more movies about the holocaust than I can count yet this short book managed to haunt me with new information. And I do mean haunt. Lily Tuck’s writing is simple and straightforward yet powerful, not an easy task. I am usually not a fan of non-fiction, but I absolutely LOVED the choice to include footnotes. I often stopped reading to write down the name of the non-fiction book in the footnote so I could look it up. I do wish there was a list at the end of all of the non-fiction books she used in her research. Anyone who loves history should read this!

The Rest Is Memory is a brief but haunting piece of historical fiction that depicts a 14 year old girl's story as she is sent to Auschwitz. Tuck's prose pulls no punches and is often brutally straightforward, as a piece of historical work should be. Having a major interest in Polish history, I enjoyed the way this book read similar to a piece of nonfiction and found the insertion of footnotes very helpful. This likely would have been a 4.5 - 5 star read for me had the structure have been a bit different. At times, the story felt very fractured and disjointed, which ultimately I believe was the Tuck's intention. I'm just not sure it entirely worked for me. I would have been more than eager to have read another couple of hundred pages of this story had it been a full length novel. Despite that being my own personal preference, I would still highly recommend The Rest Is Memory to anyone who has an interest in historical fiction.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for honest review.

The Rest Is Memory will be published on December 10th, 2024.

I’ve read from Lily Tuck before and really gravitate to her spare, minimal writing style. That style is extremely effecting in this novel, which takes a fourteen year old Polish girl, Czeslawa, who died in Auschwitz, and imagines her life story. Tuck is pulling from an extremely limited knowledge base and she still manages to create a realistic portrait of a devastatingly short life. I feel like the spareness of the prose magnifies the subject and the writing. Every sentence has a meaning and a purpose. It feels wrong to say I loved a book about a subject as calamitous as the holocaust, but I will be thinking about this one for a long time.