Book reviews are subjective. I tend to rate books not according to how “perfect” they are, seem to be, or are said to be in general but rather to how perfect they are to me. I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and was under no obligation to post a review.
What I Would Tell You by Liz Tolsma
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Description: 1941—The pounding of Nazi boots on the streets of Salonika, Greece, reverberates in Mathilda Nissim’s ears, shaking her large community of Sephardic Jews to its core. At great risk to herself and those around her, Mathilda uses the small newspaper she publishes to call her people to action. 2019—College student Tessa Payton takes a popular DNA heritage test that reveals she’s a Greek Sephardic Jew. So she empties her savings account and jets off on a journey to Greece to discover where she belongs.
My thoughts: Similar to other readers, I picked up this split-timeline ChristFic novel because I hadn’t read fiction about Sephardic Jews in Greece during WWII before. I became so engrossed in the historical side of the story that I would’ve read the book in one sitting if my schedule would have allowed it.
Now, a number of details, phrases, and characters’ thoughts in this book are redundant, and some portions of the story felt overdone or overmilked to me. I personally like a defter touch, when the characters and the narrative effectively leave certain things unrepeated or unsaid.
Also, unless there’s no direct English translation for particular words, it isn’t my preference when foreign language expressions are mixed into the dialogue of characters who are supposed to be speaking only one language, or when they say something in their own language and then repeat the words in English for the reader’s sake. To me, that draws unneeded attention to the fact that the characters are indeed technically speaking English throughout the book, which pulls me out of the setting somewhat. Even so, I did appreciate the Author’s Note with a bit of information about the Ladino language.
Aside from minor stylistic points, a couple of issues didn’t sit right with me. The first is in regard to one of Mathilda’s papers, where she seeks to move her people to action by reminding them of their ancestors: “We once were a proud nation, marching through Canaan, destroying the evil people” who lived in that land. Yet, the very Nazi regime that Mathilda is writing against—they see themselves that way, as a proud nation marching through and destroying the people who live in the land, people the Nazis see as evil. In one scene, Tessa reads the names of people who died in the Holocaust, “name after name, each one of them a flesh-and-blood person,” but did Mathilda not think of those “destroyed” Canaanites that way, as flesh-and-blood people who each had a name? To me, the example Mathilda uses isn’t the best match for a call to self-defense.
The other issue that left me unsettled is the evangelistic push in the story. I think I understand when I sometimes see Jewish readers express offense or hurt when in fiction about the Holocaust—featuring Jewish main characters—that massive Jewish tragedy and the people who died in it are used as a platform for a Christian evangelism message. I know it’s a complex issue, I in no way mean to discount Christians who are Jewish by heritage, and I can’t speak for Jewish people as they speak for themselves. But I don’t believe all Christian Fiction about the Holocaust takes the evangelistic route that this story does.
As for the novel’s contemporary side, I felt like some details were added in too late, in the final scenes. I would have needed a little more character development earlier in Tessa’s family situation to make their ending more convincing. But on Mathilda’s side of the story, I was stirred by the resolution of her impossibly hard battle with selfishness.
And I’d be remiss not to mention how much I like this novel’s book cover, with its somber but lovely monotone approach. I don’t read many split-timeline novels, but the cover of this one really called to me as a historical fiction devotee.
Prismatic Prospects 