https://www.librarything.com/work/19504481

I feel sure that this is a good book but I just couldn't get into it. It's been sitting waiting for me to pick up again on my kindle but I am now giving up on it. Not for me

A small, unnamed town in Ukraine on the periphery of extensive marshlands in the autumn of 1941 is under German occupation. One foggy morning, all of the town and outlying area’s Jewish population is rounded up and forced to stand for hours in a factory. Otto Pohl is a civil engineer, who escaped enlistment into the Wehrmacht, and is working on managing a road construction project in occupied Ukraine, is appalled by the brutality of the German troops and their Ukrainian assistants. Yasia is in her late teens, a maternal Ukrainian girl, living with her family on a local farm. Her intended is Mykola, a young farmer’s son, who has deserted from the Red Army, but volunteers to work for the Germans. The appalling events over the few days of the novel of the invasion and its aftermath are narrated through these main characters. Although the overall narrative of these horrific years is now well known, it is still an absorbing and shocking story, and one that does need to be re-told and re-imagined (if that can be possible to those of us fortunate not to live through such times)
The events are unfolded with intelligence and in elegant prose. It is a little bizarre that Otto Pohl has a very similar name to Oswald Pohl, who was a senior and now-notorious figure in the SS, and it seems strange that the main “action” against the Jewish people takes place at the margins of the town, so that the shooting and disturbance is known to all the population, whereas I was under the impression that such atrocities were generally performed in rural areas, away from the ears and eyes of the locals.

A Boy in Winter

I admit to feeling rather puzzled by the title as this book follows several strands of narrative (with a wartime Ukrainian setting) and that of Yasia -a girl- was the standout one for me.

There is Otto Pohl who is building a road for the Nazis across impossibly marshy terrain in Ukraine.- I presume he was conscripted into the German army as he is critical of their logistical management. He also starts questioning their ethics.

Yasia is a local girl who has fallen in love with Soviet Army deserter Myko. He returns but has moral dilemmas of his own.

Then there is a Jewish family centred on the story of the 2 sons Yankel and Momik.

These narrative strands intertwine as the book goes on.

For me the strength of Seiffert’s writing is that she presents you with the moral and ethical dilemmas and makes you as a reader think, well what would I have done?


Two of the most memorable parts of the story were the incarceration in a big “shed” of Jewish prisoners and Yasia’s journey across the marshes. As I would be giving plot spoilers I can’t say much more about these scenes except Seiffert is able to describe the sheer physicality of these experiences so you can nearly shiver as Yasia goes through the cold.

Seiffert isn’t an “easy” read as she is unflinching in looking at the extremes of human experience e. g. The Holocaust but these are important things that we should remember so it is good that she is able to make the reader confront their own fears whilst reminding us of love, compassion and courage.

Whenever I read a description of another new novel dealing with The Holocaust I feel a little twinge of uncertainty. Despite being one of the most horrific acts of genocide in the past century it’s a subject that’s been covered in countless novels. Is there anything new to say about this atrocity? Of course there is. Many novels from Audrey Magee’s “The Undertaking” to Ben Fergusson’s “The Spring of Kasper Meier” have proven this to me. But never has a novel I’ve read about this period of history felt more relevant and close-to-home than Rachel Seiffert’s new novel “A Boy in Winter.” I’m conscious that this has a lot to do with the current politics of our world, but I truly recognized in this story situations and patterns of behaviour that feel very near. Seiffert has fictionally dealt with this era before in her debut book “The Dark Room” which is composed of three novellas connected to the war and set in Germany. This new book is set in a small village in the Ukraine over a period of a few days in late 1941 when the Nazis come marching through “cleansing” the community of its Jewish population. It’s stunningly told and it’s a devastating story, but it also speaks so powerfully about the world we live in now.

Seiffert has the most unique and powerful way of conveying the inner sense of a character’s emotions using only external descriptions. It’s something she did so expertly in her previous novel “The Walk Home” (which was one of my favourite books of 2014) and she does it again in this new novel with an adolescent Jewish boy named Yankel. Different sections of the book focus on different characters, but the author doesn’t often shine a spotlight on Yankel. Instead, we get a sense of him through other characters such as his father who has been put in a hellish temporary holding cell by the Nazis or a young woman Yasia who takes in Yankel and his younger brother. We get descriptions of the way Yankel carries himself, his stance or the movement of his eyes, but even though the reader is not often keyed into what he’s thinking we get a real emotional understanding of him from the author’s evocative external descriptions. Seiffert does this in a way which is powerful and quite unique. The arc of his story and the semi-tragic transformation he goes through in order to survive is brilliantly told.

This is an incredibly beautiful and impactful novel, but a slight problem I had with it is an instance where a certain character who is conscripted into the Nazi forces leads the reader through the way that Jewish people were processed. There’s nothing wrong with Seiffert’s descriptions of these scenes and their impact is devastating, but it clearly felt like his character was being used simply as a device to show what the author wanted to show rather than what his character would naturally encounter. However, a striking thing about this section is the way she describes the Nazis basically forcing each other to drink while they conduct their brutal and horrific executions. It gave a powerful sense of the way many of these soldiers had to use alcohol to deaden their humanity in order to perform the atrocious duties they were ordered to perform.

The central question of this novel asks what you would do if you were faced with the choice of following the evil will of an oppressive government or being severely punished for refusing to participate. It prompts you to ask yourself what you would do if neutrality wasn’t an option. Seiffert shows the complexity of this question through a number of different characters including non-Jewish Ukranians and a German engineer who takes a remote position in the army because he wants to avoid this moral dilemma but finds himself forced to make a horrific choice. The lines between an individual’s right and wrong become blurred when they are forced to ask themselves: “where was the wrong in staying alive?” It’s a haunting question.

I read this novel as part of a mini-book group I’ve formed with the writers Antonia Honeywell and Claire Fuller. We discussed it over lunch and had a fascinating conversation, but it’s quite special in that it’s the first book (out of the three we’ve read together so far including “The Underground Railroad” and “Mothering Sunday”) that all three of us were overwhelmingly positive about. Antonia and Claire are astute critics so the fact they both liked this novel so much is high praise! Rachel Seiffert is an incredibly talented writer and I find her writing moving in a way that is hard to describe. But it’s safe to say I’d recommend that everyone should read this timely historical novel.

I held my breath at one point a little more than halfway through this short but extremely powerful story. I was stunned, perhaps expecting it, but not ready for it. Who could be, really ? Certainly not the crowd of Jews rounded up by the Nazis in this small town in Ukraine in 1941 as the German occupation begins. Everything that happens before this slowly leads up to it and everything after it is burdened by it. A few days in the lives of a few people, experiencing fear and confusion, the desire to survive, to save oneself and loved ones is seen through the eyes of a Jewish family, a farm girl, and a German engineer in charge of building roads.

I can't manage to find any other words besides heartbreaking, gut wrenching but there are touching moments and in some way it is also hopeful with the strength and determination, courage and defiance of Pohl, the engineer, Yasia, the farm girl and Yankel, the defiant young boy of the title. He refuses to let the Germans carry off his little brother - " ... no Germans must ever haul Momik. " I can't explain why I read so many holocaust stories. They are so hard to read but yet I am compelled because they are important.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Little Brown through NetGalley.

t took me a while to get into this novel and wasn't sure whether I would even continue to read this novel as I found it so slow going for some time. I have also read quite a lot of books over the past year about the Holocaust and although this story is set on the Ukraine, I have been to Poland and heard the stories how Jews were treated, the horrors suffered under the Nazis. I think one could say that this book just wasn't for me.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this novel. This is my honest review.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this novel. This is my honest review.

This powerful and haunting novel is set in a small Ukrainian town in 1941 following the German invasion and the subsequent round-up of the Jews. It’s a story we are all too familiar with but the taut, spare and measured prose effectively and atmospherically conveys the horror of the events that overwhelm the inhabitants while the tension is expertly controlled until the narrative reaches its unexpected climax.

It's hard to write yet another book about the Holocaust and to say something that hasn't been said before: Seiffert revisits WW2 as the Nazis invade Ukraine in 1941, rounding up Jewish inhabitants as part of their Final Solution. The stories told here are slight though representative, redolent of fear. There's a feel of a YA novel here, perhaps because of the age of the protagonists, perhaps because this doesn't add anything new to the vast literature already in existence. Important as it is not to let Europe's dark history be forgotten, there are more potent writings out there.