PENGUIN Salt to the Sea

As a teacher and a parent, I have ample opportunity to observe quite how ruthlessly children can tell it how it is (even my one-year-old son has learnt to roll his eyes at me). However, in my relatively sheltered life, such a tendency is generally played out for comic effect and I have never really pondered how it might take a darker turn in more turbulent times. That is, until I read Ruta Sepetys’ Carnegie Medal winner, Salt to the Sea.In a near-lyrical style, Sepetys tells the tragic tale of four children fleeing Stalin’s Red Army through Nazi territory, hoping to find salvation on-board an evacuation ship. The story is told from the viewpoints of the four main characters: Joanna, Emilia, Florian and Alfred, each haunted by some concoction of fear, fate, shame and guilt from their past. The characters feel painfully real, brought to life with a string of drip-fed details and subtle interactions. It is how these young souls try to come to terms with and explain the atrocities of an adult world that lend the words their power.The personalities are as complex as the dark subject matter demands – for example, Alfred, a devout Nazi is easy to mock and hate. It was not until after finishing the book that I remembered his young age and realised that he is simply a lonely and troubled boy swept up by the wave of hatred that devoured much of Europe at the time. While this might not lead to forgiveness, it must surely lend itself to understanding. Aside from this main cast, the supporting characters are just as involving, with the love that develops between Heinz ‘the shoe poet’ and Klaus ‘the wandering boy’ often providing a brief respite from the lingering sense of doom.The book is split into a series of very short chapters, some stretching to only one line. However, what they lack in length, they each make up for with the strength of their emotional gut-shots, conspiring by the end to leave you feeling pummelled and punch-drunk. The often soft and gentle prose seems almost out of place when describing such bleak scenes and emotions but somehow makes them all the more affecting.The pacing of the book is very impressive. It starts off slowly and I must admit that having read the superb Carnegie-contenders The Bone Sparrow and The Smell of Other People’s Houses, I initially wondered how it had managed to beat them to the prize. However, as the pages flicked over I realised how effective the book was at evoking the tense monotony and boredom of war, the characters are constantly looking over their shoulders but with little to actually do other than trudge onwards and occasionally avert their eyes from the world’s assorted horrors. That being said, when the final action kicks off, the intensity of it is enough to leave you dizzy (I read the final 100 pages in a single stressful sitting).Despite being a ‘children’s book’, I cannot think of another text that so matter-of-factly and brutally lays bare the desperation of war. Some of the scenes involving children at the port left me so overwhelmed with disgust I had to stop reading to compose myself (the only other book ever to make me do that is American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis). This is an important story to tell – based on an unbelievably forgotten history of a real-life event – but it is not an easy one to hear.

Salt to the Sea is a powerful YA historical fiction novel set in Germany and East Prussia towards the end of World War 2. Desperate to flee, people are trekking across Germany to board the Wilhelm Gustloff that will take them away from this war-torn land. We follow four characters, all from different lands, all with secrets, all attempting to board the ship. Based on the true event of the largest maritime disaster in history, this compelling novel will take you away and leave you thinking about it long after you turn the final page.I love Supetys’ other novels, so I had very high expectations for this one, and it did not disappoint. The characters in this book are all so interesting and complex, that even though there are four different perspectives that change very frequently, I never felt the need to check the chapter headings. Even the secondary characters, some of whom did not have proper names, felt so unique and realistic that your heart ached for them as much as it did for the main characters.The pacing for this book was definitely faster than Supetys’ other novels and I found myself flying through this book. You feel the urgency the characters do to board this ship and escape the horrific circumstances they have been dealt. I could easily have read this book in a day had I not had other things get in the way.It is evident that Sepetys did an enormous amount of research for this book which completely paid off. The setting and atmosphere of this book was so bleak, you are instantly transported back to East Prussia in the winter of 1945. You felt the harshness of the winter, the urgency of the people to flee and to seek a better life, the hopelessness of their situation. Throughout the novel you are filled with dread as you are reminded what inspired this book and where it is headed, but that definitely did not take away from the reading experience whatsoever.My favourite thing about Supetys’ novels is that, even with these bleak and horrific circumstances the characters are in, we still see the goodness of humanity and how the human spirit carries on in even the most dire of situations. I cried for half an hour after reading this book and I know it is one that will stay with me.I had absolutely no idea about this tragedy before I read this book and was shocked it was not more well known. Even though the characters in this book are fictional, you are reminded that this was a real event in which 9,000 people, over half of which were children, lost their lives in one night. I urge you all to pick this book up and read it, so at last their story can be heard.

Wow, what a fantastic read. I loved the writing style and how we got to know the characters in bitesize pieces, which I found really engaging. I read the last few pages 3 times just to ensure I captured everything.I knew nothing about this huge Maritime disaster, but will definitely research it.

Saw the author being interviewed on Breakfast TV and she was so enthusiastic, inspiring and engaging, I wanted to know more about this terrible disaster of which most people, like me, had never heard about so I ordered a copy of her book immediately. I have only just started to read it, but it has gripped me from the start, the story being told through the eyes of four unrelated people. I enjoy this style of narrative and the fact that it is based on a real event pays tribute to the thousands of people, many of them children who lost their lives that night.

After reading Sepety's 'Between Shades' and 'Out of the Easy' a couple of years ago, I have literally been counting down the months to this book's release, and I can confidently say it did not disappoint. Set in the winter of 1945, Sepety's third novel shows the closing months of WWII from an unfamiliar perspective, the plight of East Prussia (an ancient German kingdom now part of northern Poland) during the Soviet advance across Europe, as the Nazi's began to lose footing in the East. The descriptions of the cold, the fear, the hunger, and the horror of that time are poignantly described by Sepetys in her usual harrowing yet gripping style.As with her two previous novels the protagonists are all teenagers, though the main difference with 'Salt to the Sea' is that it has four main characters instead of one, each from a very different background (one is German, one Lithuanian, one Prussian, and one Polish) offering divergent and illuminating perspectives of what WWII did to each of these nations. The narration-style switches between the first-person perspective of each of the four characters, which I found at first slightly disorienting, but once the story gripped me I didn't even notice.Although the book is advertised as being primarily about the disaster that befell the Wilhelm Gustloff, the majority of the book takes place within Prussia, showing the plight of the fleeing refugees; the ship is the setting for the book's powerful climax. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. It's historically accurate, it's beautifully written and fast paced, and the characters (as ever with Sepetys) are closely drawn and consistently believable.The only reason I decided to give 'Salt to the Sea' four starts instead of five is because I felt it was lacking in something. Both 'Between Shades' and 'Out of the Easy' read as though they were stories very close to Sepety's heart; I didn't quite get that impression with this book. It felt more like a piece of history Sepety's was interested in novelising, but not necessarily one that she was intensely passionate about. Regardless, this book has been worth the wait and, as I said earlier, I would absolutely recommend it!