I recently finished The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. I’m surprised I’m writing this book review at all because I usually don’t read books about war or the Holocaust.
I think it’s so important to know the history, but reading about these things for “fun” in my free time is not usually something I gravitate toward. My sister-in-law recommended this book to me, and I decided to give it a chance.
I found it on Libby and I was on the waitlist for about 2 months before my hold was ready. I always think it’s a good sign when a book has a long waitlist. People must be reading it for a reason!
Synopsis
This book switches back and forth between two different storylines, in two different time periods. Alice’s story takes place in modern day Florida. Alice is a stay-at-home mom of a girl and boy. Her son has autism, and Alice’s life revolves around taking care of him. This has put a strain on her relationship with her husband. Alice’s grandmother is in the hospital, which is putting more stress on Alice; she’s very close with her grandmother and wants to be with her as much as possible. Her grandma can’t talk after her stroke, but it becomes very apparent that she is trying to communicate something urgent to Alice.
Alina’s story is set in 1940’s Poland during the Nazi invasion. She has to say goodbye to the love of her life, Tomasz, because he is leaving for school in Warsaw. Things take a turn after Tomasz leaves, and life changes drastically for Alina and her family. They have to hide in bomb shelters, ration food, and keep identification papers on them at all times for random checks by Nazi soldiers.
As the book moves forward, we learn that Alina is Alice’s grandmother. We learn the story of her life before she left Poland for America. But why she left, how she left, why she changed her name, and why she is so desperate for Alice to go back are all mysteries that are slowly revealed throughout their interwoven stories.
Thoughts
Although these two women’s stories couldn’t seem more different from each other, the author weaves their stories together in a way that I thought was beautiful, effortless, and unexpected in some ways. There were some questions that weren’t answered until the last few chapters. I think that made it a good read all the way through to the end.
This book took me a little longer to read. That was because the content was heavier and I didn’t want to rush through it. I didn’t want to miss any details that would help me figure out how it would end.
I recently started logging books on GoodReads, and I found it really difficult to actually give this one a rating. Based on the storylines, the format, the character development, and the writing, this book would get 5 stars easily from me. But the content was very heavy, and that made it harder to want to give it 5 stars. At the same time, I don’t think it’s fair for me to not give something 5 stars simply because I don’t like the topic, when I knew what the topic was going to be going into it.
If you liked this Book Review of The Things We Cannot Say, you can read more book reviews here.
