Gretel and The Dark is the calibre of book best read on a cold winter's eve, whilst you yourself are warm and serene. Gretel and The Dark is however, hardly a "light" read, in the sense of it's raw and unrelenting narrative, as well as the brittle storyline which eludes to some of the darkest periods of living human history. In no ways do I wish to disparage the book because it was excellent and Eliza Granville tells the story with beauty and the sensitivity that the topic so dearly needs.
The story takes place in two different settings; Vienna 1899 and what is later eluded to be Nazi Germany (specifically set in Ravensbruck concentration camp). It begins in Austria, with the story circling around one Josef Breuer, a renowned doctor who discovers a young girl near a lunatic assylum; head shaven, close to death. He brings her home with him, desperate to uncover her past and how she came to be. However his investigations are in vain. Lilie, so he baptises his patient, has an other-worldly quality about her and insists that she has been created to travel to 1899 to "kill the monster", who she names vaguely as "Adi Wolf" (an inspiring use of dramatic irony here, clearly eluding to Hitler who would at this time be a child). Desperately, she tries to warn the Doctor that, as a Jew, his future descendants will be in peril in the world that she knows, but this only heightens suspicion of Lilie in the minds of the locals. Her murky past ties her to a local brothel of monumental disrepute, yet as investigations grow ever deeper, the lives of those she loves are put at risk.
The story is diverted at each chapter to Krysta, a child who lives in a world far from Vienna, 1899. Her childish nature is soon made apparent, as well as her utter dependency on her Papa, who is too busy operating on the "animal people" (a play on words possibly borrowed from "The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas") to attend to his recently motherless daughter. Krysta recalls her time spent with her old Nanny/house-keeper, Grete, and the story-tales that she would tell her as a child. It is obvious the impact that these originally Germanic fairy-tales have on Krysta's imagination- she has a clear way of relating them to specific events in her life… even in the most macabre and despicable ways thinkable, towards the climax of the book. Granville uses this technique flawlessly. I admire how she is not overt in explicitly describing what is going on, but rather retains some innocence, which gives the overall book this sense of light in even the darkest places.
It might not seem appropriate, given the nature of the book, to comment that I enjoyed it. However, I did. I enjoyed the ever growing suspense and running the possible scenarios that the twist could be over in my head like a murder mystery. I enjoyed slowly putting together the pieces of the story like a jigsaw. I enjoyed skimming between two dark and different worlds; one naive and the other sickeningly real. I put it down with some reluctance because each chapter was in some way better than the last. Even if the story line came unravelled in some places, or the plot became somewhat over-whelming, it is justified by Granville's truly beautiful writing. Her sentences were works of art. The descriptions were unbelievably well crafted and held the elegance that a reader might expect from poetry.
To conclude.
Read this book.
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