Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Germany, 1942. Adeline and Jozef cling to each other as they are directed off the train and pulled apart by Nazi guards at the gates of Auschwitz. Stripped of their belongings, their arms are inked with prison numbers. In the death camp, their days are numbered––will they ever see each other again?
South Carolina, ten years later. As a summer storm sweeps in, shocked townspeople gather at the edge of a forest lake. The body of a local girl had been found on the bank that morning. As thirteen-year-old Alice stands in the crowd, she catches sight of a figure, hidden in the trees, watching. She knows who he is—a newcomer in town, a German refugee named Jozef. Her neighbors whisper that he can’t be trusted—that he saw terrible things in the war. But what, Alice wonders, is he doing here now? And could he possibly be connected to what has just happened?
When Alice confronts the man, Jozef opens ups about his painful past. Hearing about the desperate choices people were forced to make in Auschwitz, and the hunt for freedom amongst so much heartbreak, Alice starts to see her own life—and the death of her friend—in a new light. And, as their bond deepens, Alice finally uncovers why Jozef was at the lake that day. When the long-awaited storm breaks the suffocating heatwave, the terrible truth finally comes out, and Alice’s life will never be the same again…
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Note to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
Initially, I found The Note by Carly Schabowski to be quite slow in getting going. There was a lot of information presented to the reader in terms of setting the scene in North Carolina, America that I felt things could have been said in a line or two, instead it took paragraphs or sometimes an entire chapter to get to the point. I questioned the relevance of the focus being on the murder of a young girl in a small town instead of what the blurb suggested, that the book would detail Jozef’s experiences of Auschwitz. These initial worries/frustrations were soon allayed as once Jozef begins to tell Alice his story during that long hot summer in Milford things slowly started to fall into place and I became engrossed in the fascinating, disturbing and upsetting story that unfolded. This is a heart-breaking read. The true impact of which you only fully appreciate once you reach the very end and you understand the magnitude of what happened, and the sacrifices people made. There is plenty of food for thought here and plenty to debate as there is definitely no clear cut opinions to be formed given how invested you become in the story and then due to the twists, turns and surprises that spill forth towards the end.
On the night in the summer of 1953 that Alice turns thirteen, a local girl, Nancy Briggs is murdered and her body is found in a lake. The town is devastated by this loss and suspicion falls on refugee Jozef. A man who has kept himself to himself, not integrating with anyone but going about his own business. Whilst reading this you do forget that Alice is only just 13, at times she acts far younger in what she says and how she views things but as a friendship with Jozef develops you can see the changes in her as she is deeply affected by what she hears as he recalls his life story. For the first several chapters, there is lots of detail about the town, the heat they are experiencing and Alice’s friends - Mikey, George and Clem. To be honest, I wasn’t that interested in their friendships, although further on I appreciated the role of one of Alice’s friends more so than the other two. I found the descriptions of the tree house and the games they played just extra information that was not needed. Alice also seemed upset that her older brother Billy, who throughout their childhood she is close to at some points and at others they are very separated, now seems even more distant and out of reach.
So it didn’t seem surprising that when Mikey breaks a window in the home of Jozef, that Alice feels guilty and takes the blame. She gravitates towards Jozef and agrees to do some work for him in order to pay for said window. It’s like her family and friends have become preoccupied with other things most notably the murder, Mikey’s family situation and the developing closeness between George and Clem, that Alice herself feels lost and on the outside. Jozef offers her a sanctuary and although other residents may be wary of him Alice soon finds that he is deeply lonely and soon he starts to tell his incredible story. Jozef recounts his story through a few chapters at a time. I felt totally transported back to Germany and France during the war and almost forgot that this book was predominantly set in America. It was like I was jolted back to the small town when Jozef stopped and Alice had to return to her normal life. It shows how caught up in his life I became that I didn’t want those chapters to end. But slipping back and forth between the two timelines although they were not too far apart in terms of years, is how the author wove the story and it served its purpose well.
Undoubtedly, it’s Jozef’s story that stood out in this book and what we learn is an incredible story of love, bravery and strength in the most desperate of times. It’s also a story of a friendship that meant so much but fractured and came back together at a time when needed most. I think lots of readers will form strong opinions of the friendship and what it goes through and the subsequent actions that unfold but I found myself split in two, not able to form a strong opinion one way or the other given the picture built up throughout the story. It shows how we take what we are presented with at face value until firm and solid facts tell us otherwise.
Germany, 1930 and we meet Jozef. He comes from a Jewish family and lives in Munich. Bruno is his best friend since childhood. He is not Jewish and his father is a politician. They come from different backgrounds but have a strong bond but that all changes with the arrival of Adi from Paris whose parents are French and German respectively. Jozef quickly falls in love with her which upsets Bruno. He is angry that he can’t have what he wants but Jozef and Adi’s love is strong and it will see them through the worst of times. Jozef’s story progresses up to the beginning of the war and the years that follow. Adi and himself marry and move to Paris where they believe they will be safe. But danger lurks at every corner and when the Germans arrive in the city they are rounded up with many thousands of others. The descriptions of their imprisonment in a velodrome in the city and their subsequent travelling on a cattle truck to Auschwitz were so powerful and vivid and hard to read about. Such awful horrors and atrocities were committed and such unlawful starvation, barbarity, evil and cruelty were inflicted on so many people.
The couple arrive at Auschwitz and are separated. Here the story once again took on a different tone but the love that Jozef has for Adi never fades. The details of life in the camp, the conditions, the unmentionable work the inmates were forced to do and the struggle to survive on a daily basis were shared in all their horror and it leaves you reeling in shock no matter how many times you have read a book set in Auschwitz. To say much more regarding the camp and what happens would give away far too much. Needless to say my admiration for Jozef grew and in desperate times you turn to those who have always been there for you even though you struggle with the stance they may have taken. Given the situation you are in you will do anything at all to make it out. Jozef continues to tell his story to Alice and there are hints as to what the secret he holds close to his chest will be and when it does come to the light you will be shocked as is Alice and it forces her to revaluate everything you have previously heard and absorbed. Will it affect how she deals with what is unfolding in her own life? Will unburdening help or hinder Jozef?
Given, I found it difficult to get into this book at the beginning, I was surprised how rapidly my overall opinion of it changed. I thought I was going to struggle with it throughout the entire reading but instead I found my reading pace significantly picked up and I read this in one sitting. It’s different from what the author has written before and not your run of the mill World War Two story but I think perhaps it has been one of my favourite books that she was written. I did have some slight suspicions at one stage as to the big reveal but these materialised only in the very later stages. I went on to be correct in my guess but the author had written things so well I was glad to not discover anything to early on as it would have really affected how I viewed a lot of the story far too early on. The Note certainly leaves a deep and lasting impact on you and it’s one of the better WW2 fiction books that I have read so far this year and definitely worth some of your time to uncover the incredible and divisive story that awaits you between the covers.
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