Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
Chargement... The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up Englishpar Edith Milton
Top Five Books of 2013 (1,224) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. The title of this book is misleading. They should have just said "Memories of Growing Up English" and left out the part about the Kindertransport. Although the author and her sister did arrive in England from Germany on the Kindertransport, they had a deeply ordinary childhood with an upper-middle-class English family, and the Holocaust is barely touched upon. Although this book is well-written (almost poetic) and good for conveying the atmosphere of everyday life in England during World War II, I hadn't been looking for a book about everyday life in England during World War II and I found it boring and barely finished it. It's a good enough book but not my cup of tea. A sweet surprise of a memoir set, mostly, in England, where Edith Milton grew up. Milton was 7 years old in 1939 when she was shipped off by her parents, who were Jewish, who feared the coming nightmare. Free of any hint of trauma, marvelously funny and deft, this little book is honest in every aspect, especially in its admission of the sheer joy of being swept into a big, cheerful, loving and generous British family. Though the young girl will later question her identity and her history, she will do so with clear-eyed integrity. Milton has a novelist's eye for character, and an ear for ordinary speech. She is also unfailingly witty and sometimes outright hilarious. A small miracle. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Prix et récompenses
In 1939, on the eve of Hitler's invasion of Poland, seven-year-old Edith Milton (then Edith Cohn) and her sister Ruth left Germany by way of the Kindertransport, the program which gave some 10,000 Jewish children refuge in England. The two were given shelter by a jovial, upper-class British foster family with whom they lived for the next seven years. Edith chronicles these transformative experiences of exile and good fortune in The Tiger in the Attic, a touching memoir of growing up as an outsider in a strange land. In this illuminating chronicle, Edith describes how she struggled to fit in and to conquer self-doubts about her German identity. Her realistic portrayal of the seemingly mundane yet historically momentous details of daily life during World War II slowly reveals istelf as a hopeful story about the kindness and generosity of strangers. She paints an account rich with colorful characters and intense relationships, uncanny close calls and unnerving bouts of luck that led to survival. Edith's journey between cultures continues with her final passage to America-yet another chapter in her life that required adjustment to a new world-allowing her, as she narrates it here, to visit her past as an exile all over again. The Tiger in the Attic is a literary gem from a skilled fiction writer, the story of a thoughtful and observant child growing up against the backdrop of the most dangerous and decisive moment in modern European history. Offering a unique perspective on Holocaust studies, this book is both an exceptional and universal story of a young German-Jewish girl caught between worlds. "Adjectives like 'audacious' and 'eloquent,' 'enchanting' and 'exceptional' require rationing. . . . But what if the book demands these terms and more? Such is the case with The Tiger in the Attic, Edith Milton's marvelous memoir of her childhood."-Kerry Fried, Newsday "Milton is brilliant at the small stroke . . . as well as broader ones."-Alana Newhouse, New York Times Book Review Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucun
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)940.53History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War IIClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
Est-ce vous ?Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing. |
The story is entertainingly told and may be one of my best books of the year as well as a quick and easy read. Not a "just the facts" recitation but told as the memories would naturally surface with a digression here and there and a bit about how the adult Edith came to interpret her memories. She also carefully points out how unreliable some memories can be after so many decades.
Recommended.