I just finished reading “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” and I needed to pen down my thoughts about it somewhere.
The book itself is based on the real life story of Lale Sokolov, a holocaust survivor. As someone extremely into WW2, I always like reading about holocaust survivors stories because it helps me gain perspective on my life and also for how inspiring they are. I went into the book with high expectations especially considering the high ratings it has on Amazon/Goodreads.
But the book was.. disappointing. I am not going to rant about the historical inaccuracies because I accepted this book as a work of ‘historical fiction’.
But I quickly realized the prose was just…flat. It skips past the more brutal aspects of the camps. I expect a book about the holocaust to highlight the horrors taking place in the camps but this book simply doesn’t cut it. The characters present itself are very one dimensional and undercooked. The romance between Lale and Gita is meh. Gita herself doesn’t have much of a personality. It also feels like the book tries to paint Lale as this 100% good guy which somehow doesn’t sound right. No disrespect intended to the real Lale and Gita of course, I am sure they are good, interesting people but the way Heather Morisson wrote this, you wouldn’t even guess they were real people.
The book went by way too fast and read more like an “airport novel” than a book about the holocaust. While not the same subject material, I found “Escape from Camp 14” (a similar book I read) to be a far better depiction about a man struggling to survive and eventually escape, from a prison camp. (Escape from Camp 14 is set in North Korea but my point still stands)
The premise is fascinating and I am sure the real Lale Sokolov went through a really inspiring journey and displayed great strength to survive the horrors of the Holocaust. But I really wish this was written by a better author because his story deserves to be told in a better way.
2.5/5
by Ducard42