Having been a lover of historical fiction in the past, I wanted to give this Holocaust story a chance. I know some readers loved this novel and have praised the flowery writing style, but I just could not get through it. I won't be recommending this book.

I've heard that some History classes are reading this book, and I wish other schools would join them! I enjoyed the experimental style of this book and the beautiful writing. The story of the twins was extremely gripping, and I'm so thankful to Netgalley for allowing me access to this wonderful book.

Very moving book. I would for sure recommend this in a high school AP class or at my school's library. I think students would benefit a lot from reading it!

I vividly recall one of my lecturers responding to a student’s complaint about their mark for an essay – the lecturer said that if the student thought he started at 100% and deducted marks for errors as he read, the student was mistaken – “You start with no marks and earn them as I read…” It comes to mind because like the lecturer, I go into every book hoping for five stars but stating with just one. Half stars and whole stars accrue (and sometimes fall) as I read. By the end, I settle on a score – it’s arbitrary, but is useful measure when I look back on my reading.

Which leads me to Mischling by Affinity Konar. I tend to avoid fictionalised accounts of the Holocaust (there are plenty of true stories available) – I feel uncomfortable about the exploitation of historical events for ‘entertainment’ (obviously this makes unfavourable and overly simplistic assumptions about authors ‘exploiting’ and readers reading only for ‘entertainment’). However, I picked up Mischling because it made the Best Books of 2016 list.

It’s the story of twin girls, Pearl and Stasha, who arrive at Auschwitz in 1944 and immediately become part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele’s Zoo. Josef Mengele, perpetrator of unparalleled atrocities at Auschwitz, particularly focused on medical and genetic experiments, and favoured twins, as he could use one as a ‘control’ in his experiments.

Konar’s story details the bond between the girls – telepathic in nature; what happens to them at Auschwitz; and what follows when the camp is abandoned by the SS and death marches begin across Poland.

I am going to assume that Konar did her research and that the gratuitous details about Mengele’s experiments are correct. These scenes are easy-pickings for the author – of course the reader will sit up and take notice but how do they contribute to Holocaust literature in general? They don’t. Equally, Konar’s use of imagery (poppies) and symbols (a piano key) to articulate the horror and hopes of Auschwitz prisoners falls flat – their ‘meaningfulness’ was forced and heavy-handed.

There is opportunity for suspense in the second half but instead, the story plods along and is confused with the introduction of multiple characters, that blur into a drawn-out and predictable ending.

When I finished the book I considered what elements of the story stood out. There was only one – the portrayal of Mengele as ‘Uncle Doctor’. The ‘kindly’ name obviously a complete contradiction to his cruel nature. Those belonging to the ‘zoo’ were given more food and clothing than other prisoners, but at the cost of enduring Mengele’s horrific experiments. This element of the story highlighted the hierarchies between prisoners, created by their captors, and the trauma inherent in those hierarchies (similar to the Kapo, although the Kapo was not referred to in this book).

1.5/5 Avoid.

I received my copy of Mischling from the publisher, Little, Brown & Company, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review this ARC of Mischling.

It's no secret that during WWII, the notorious Dr. Mangele conducted experiments on those considered "unpure" of blood. Among those experiments were twins, triplets, and quads.

Pearl and Stasha are twin sisters who are both so similar and so different. Their mother gives them up to Dr. M as a sign of cooperation and hope for better treatment toward the family. The story launches there, giving us the harrowing tales of the girl's journey, inside and outside of the camp.

Ok, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was something really off putting about this story, and this is coming from someone who eats these kinds of historical books voraciously. The writing is gorgeous, maybe too gorgeous? Especially coming from two girls experiencing unimaginable atrocities, it kind of distracted from the importance of the story. It also felt inconsistent considering how young the girls were, and maybe even disrespectful? When it comes to accounts such as these, I want straightforward and honest, not poetry.

This was such a wonderful book. I knew that Mengele had experimented on people at Auschwitz, but did not know of his interest in twins. The ability of the two girls to survive makes this story one that everyone should read.

Going into reading any book based on the Holocaust, there are always anxieties about how graphic the suffering is going to be depicted. Affinity Konar did an amazing job doing the real victims justice, but also in crafting a fictional universe within the concentration camp. Seeing the twins going through their individual experiences after the camp was liberated was interesting as there are rarely any stories told about what happens directly after the prisoners' release.

Thank you Little, Brown, and Company for providing a digital copy of Mischling by Affinity Konar via NetGalley.

Mischling is the story of twin girls Pearl and Stasha who find themselves in Josef Mengele's--the Angel of Death-- Zoo at Auschwitz. Their story is told from the alternating viewpoints of the two sisters detailing their very different experiences, despite their identicality.

While I say that this is a story about Pearl and Stasha, it really is, as the author points out in the author's note, the story of many many others drawing inspiration from Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel's Children of the Flames as well as Sara Nomberg-Przytyk's Auschwitz: True Tales form a Grotesque Land; Tadeusz Borowski's Theis Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen; Eva Mozes Kor and Mary Wright's Echoes from Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele's Twins; Arnost Lustig's Children of the Holocaust; Elie Wiesel's Night; Diane Ackerman's The Zookeepers Wife; Mary Lowenthal Felstiner's To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era; Dr. Gisella Perl's I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz; Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide; Primo Levi's The Truce, If This Is a Man, The Periodic Tabe, and the Drowned and the Saved; and the works of Paul Celan.

I enjoyed this book, as much as one can enjoy a book about the horrors of the Holocaust, I thought it was quite beautifully and originally written. This book reads like a memory, or memories; unfolding with vivid recollection, almost as if the events described are happening right then and there. The image of the poppy, a symbol of remembrance, pops up throughout the story as if a reminder to never forget. Most definitely not a light read.

Truth be told, I thought I was a little burnt out on World War II historical fiction. I’ve just read so many in the past few years, and at some point, there started to be too many similarities. I felt like I wasn’t gleaning anything new. But Mischling is a definite exception. Before now, I’d heard of Josef Mengele and knew he had committed horrific atrocities against Jewish prisoners at the concentration camps, grotesque medical experiments on both adults and children, but the details of that particular history were unknown to me.
Mischling is written from the perspective of a pair of Jewish twins, Pearl and Stasha, whose parents leave them with Mengele at “the Zoo”, believing his lies that they will be safer there than as prisoners in the concentration camp they are sure to find themselves in eventually. The girls believe that the arrangement is temporary, that they are being saved because they are special, that being there means their parents will also be kept safe, and eventually they will all be reunited.
It’s true that Mengele regards them as special. He has a particular interest in multiples (twins, triplets, etc.), as is often the case with medical professionals who engage in experiments. But also, he is interested in those who are Jewish but exhibit characteristics the Nazi’s consider Aryan – blonde hair, blue eyes, etc. It was assumed that those who exhibited these characteristics couldn’t be purely Jewish, that they had to have mixed heritage. The German word for someone with mixed-blood is mischling. Twins that were also mischling (or assumed to be) were highly desirable to Mengele, and so, unfortunately, Pearl and Stasha were truly precious to him. Being precious to Mengele comes with some minor advantages, but offers no protection from the violations he commits against those in his “care”. The horrors that Pearl and Stasha suffer, along with all of the others in “the Zoo”, are beyond imagining. His depravity is the kind that most people couldn’t begin to comprehend. But the girls have good instincts for survival. They make friends with others in Mengele’s menagerie. And they do their best to get through it all, by whatever means they find necessary at the time.
In the midst of reading this book, I came across a review, and for some reason, it struck me in such a way that, in all the weeks that have passed since I finished the book, I can’t stop thinking about my reading experience in light of theirs. In a nutshell, that reader found the book to be horrific, calling it pain porn, finding the narrative to be too appalling to have any value. I disagree wholeheartedly.
The author was straightforward about the few experiments she did mention. The descriptions were relatively short, infrequent, and almost clinical. There were no elaborate and dramatic scenes of torture. And that’s because the book wasn’t as much about what Mengele did as it was about how what he did affected his victims, how those victims found a way to survive, mentally, what they had to withstand physically, how they found a way to hold onto hope when there was no apparent reason to, how in trying times, in the absence of family, you can build a new family, family that leans on each other and helps each other to get through the worst of it. This book was not about the infliction of pain, it was about surviving it.
I say all this because some people might read a similar review and be turned away from this book, and I think that would be a great loss. This is a book worth reading. It offers a unique perspective on the atrocities of World War II, shining light on a monster that hasn’t been as present in historical fiction as he should, and more importantly, it is a beautiful – if painful – story about love, hope, family, and survival.
I can’t recommend it enough.

**Review will be published to blog on 03 Jul 2017 at 10:00AM EST**

I chose this book because:

I’ve heard a lot about this book, although I can’t recall where, when, or what, and now I’m finally getting around to reading it! After reading the blurb, the first book I thought of was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Because I’m interested in historical fiction like that, I'm interested in this book.

Upon reading it:

The writing was surreal and lyrical. I got that feeling right away when the book began with Stasha, who already had an awareness of her twin Pearl whilst they were still in their mother’s womb. This book focuses on the unique connection that these twin sisters have to each other, and the conflict (besides the horrors of World War II) was the interest Josef Mengele had in what would happen to the twins when they were separated.

The extremity of Stasha and Pearl’s connection felt more absurd than strong, so this influenced the way I was able to immerse myself in the story. I mean, yes, I can see how twins would have a special bond that other siblings don’t have, but having an awareness before birth was a little too much for me. (There are some other unrealistic examples of their connection too, but I don’t want to give too much away.) Throughout the story, the twins seemed to have this sort of ESP for each other that I wasn’t quite sold by. It felt a little too convenient for the storyline. Additionally, the ending felt too tidy.

However, I understand that stories aren’t always meant to be realistic; they are fiction after all. Perhaps this exaggerated connection will help some readers feel more deeply for the twins, but it didn’t do that for me.

Another thing about this strange awareness these twelve-year-old twins had was that they somehow observed many of the major events of World War II, which felt unrealistic and felt like parts of the story were spread too thin. But on the other hand, if the story was more contained, I don’t think the surreal and lyrical style could support an engaging pace for the story.

Despite my criticism, the writing itself was good, and there were certainly parts that made me feel things.

As I said earlier, I heard a lot of good things about this book, but after finishing the book myself and reading some Goodreads reviews, I realised that there’s a split with this book. Some people really liked it, and some people really didn’t. People who liked it liked the lyrical writing. People who didn’t like it found the lyrical writing inappropriate. I love literary fiction, but for some reason, the lyrical style didn’t work for me here. Maybe it’s because of the subject matter. Because opinions of this book are so split, if you are interested in this book, I would recommend going for it anyway and making a decision for yourself!

This book was something I really wanted to enjoy more that what I did. It wasn't a bad book and I would say to anyone to read it BUT and the but comes from the over used artsy type writing, I felt wasn't needed and creates a disconnect from the characters. There were things in this book that felt for me was a little over done on the prose and instead of focusing on the very sad circumstances of what happened, it distracted me from having an emotional attachment.

A harrowing tale of love, friendship and family, exploring one of the most deplorable places known in history, Mengele’s Zoo, an experimental lab inside Auschwitz. Twin sisters Pearl and Stasha are spared the daily horrors of the camp, but in exchange, they’re taken in as Megele’s pets, prized for their identical natures. While Pearl is in charge of the past, and the immense sadness that comes with remembering, Stasha is in charge of their future, no matter how bright or how dim it may be. Just as rumors of the Russian’s approach spread, Pearl mysteriously disappears, leaving Stasha desperate for vengeance and the hope that one day, she’ll find her sister alive. Together, and apart, the sisters will navigate their way through the new world, finding the depths of despair reaching far past the confines of the zoo.

Though one of the saddest tales I’ve ever read, Mischling is hopeful in spirit, told in a childlike wonder fitting the young ages of Pearl and Stasha (barely 13 by the end of the war). Both responsible for a portion of time, each sister finds it within herself to shield the other from the terror’s they’ve experienced, covering their starvation with a simple game to pass the time or crafting curious tales to shadow the horrific injuries done to them. A truly heartbreaking look into one of the darkest times in human history, Mischling is a beautiful tale of hope, showing the remnants of beauty even in the time of great turmoil.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

As in with all of the books concerning the atrocities of the Holocaust, this is a tough read. This book is centered around Mengele and all of the horrible experiments he conducted on people, especially twins or anyone who could be perceived different or special.

Sasha and Pearl are a set of those twins in Mengele's Zoo. Sasha believes she has been given "deathlessness" by Mengele and can't succumb to any of the torture, unlike her sister, Pearl. Another interesting topic was those who committed atrocities because they were made to do so - how culpable are they? We automatically think of everyone involved as being totally evil, Miri may make you see some grays in that thought.

It's beautifully written but sometimes the story was a bit too flowery or maybe fairy-tale like - I kept wanting to skim some passages to further the story. The first half of the book was 5 stars to me; the second more like 3.

In all honesty I must say that I enjoyed the second half of this book much more than the first. If you are not a person that is used to reading about the holocaust it can be a very difficult and upsetting read. It was hard to read about twins who are very, very close being separated from their entire family as well as each other at times and what they had to endure. I have to say however that the story is beautifully written.

I really wanted to love this book, but it always felt a little bit too ungrounded for me. Perhaps this was intentional because the brutality of reality would have been hard to stomach. Still, the sort of magicalness that wove through the whole book became exhausting after awhile, and I would have liked to switch out of it from time to time. Still, it's a heartbreaking concept.

As I actually completed this book shortly before midnight, it is my final book of 2016, and while a difficult read, it is also very well done. In spite of all the nonfiction I have read about the Holocaust and the horrors of the death camps, Mischling has opened my eyes and mind further.

Mischling is an historic fiction written about one specific aspect of the Holocaust that I have heard about but never read many details of over the years. Konar brings to life, through the eyes, ears and bodies of two young girls, Stasha and Pearl, the infamous "twin program" of Dr Mengele. Now I have perhaps a greater knowledge as this fiction is based in historical fact. We learn in ways that are difficult to forget; they immerse the reader in these girls' lives.

I knew there was such a program and that Mengele performed various medical exams , tests and experiments, but this novel brought what had been a mild unreality into stark reality. At the same time, it is a well-written and gripping read, however difficult the subject. I only regret it has taken me so long to complete my review.

I do recommend this book highly while recognizing that it is a difficult book to read.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I received this e-book from NetGalley for an honest review.

Of all storylines, plots, and settings, World War II, particularly stories of concentration camps and the Holocaust, are my least favorite. The sadness, depression, desperation, and hunger that run through these narratives, nonfiction as well as fiction, really mess with my psyche. I spend most of my time reading and thinking, "How can one human ever do this to another human?" I cannot even wrap my head around it most of the time.

"Mischling" is one of these that the feeling seems to ring even truer than in some other novels with the same setting. Auschwitz is the most famous of death camps, and what could have been another house of horrors book is really a novel about poetry, beauty, and strength in a dire situation. Twin sisters Pearl and Stasha arrive at camp and are singled out because they are twins, an anomaly to be singled out by Josef Mengele, the mad scientist that wants to get to the bottom of the connection that twins have vs regular siblings. He throws them in his zoo to use for show and experiment. The entire book is brutal, muddy, cold, and filled with ugliness. The shine in this is Konar's building of Pearl and Stasha, their personalities, their connection, and their thinking. They are smart, funny, and creative girls, that are trying to stay together and survive. As they weave their tale, alternating sisters with each chapter, you cannot help but be in love with both of them, even when they seek nothing but vengeance on the people that did this to them. The strength of the twins is what keeps the novel compelling and sets it apart from many other books.

"Mischling" is heartbreaking. It took me a long time to get through it because some days I had to stop and calm the sadness and anger that grows from the reading about monsters. The novel is wonderful, but it is beautiful in the way that is painful every step of the way. I do not read many Holocaust books because the pain is in all of the stories, but I feel satisfied that this is one that I battled through.

To paraphrase Dave Eggers, this is a staggering work of heartbreaking genius. A deeply affecting tale of twin girls, Pearl and Stasha, the Mischling of the title (a term used to define those with both Aryan and Jewish blood during Hitler's reign of terror), and their journey from ghetto to Auschwitz, where they fall under the supervision of Josef Mengele, the SS Angel of Death, who carried out horrific experiments on the barely living in the name of genetic research, and who had a particular fascination with identical twins, dwarfism and other birth abnormalities.
Told in alternating chapters between Pearl and Stasha, this is a child's eye view of man's inhumanity to man, told with the innocence and resilience of youth, where you believe an adult who tells you you're special and if you do what he tells you your mother and grandfather will receive special privileges, and where you don't necessarily fully notice the living hell in which you've ended up.
This slightly fantastical lens on the world of the twins, means the harsh realities of their environs are even more horrifying when they creep into the narrative. Konar handles the subject matter impeccably, with just the right balance of horror, heartbreak, innocence and ultimately hope. That this book represented for me a life-affirming journey from humanity's lowest point is a testament to her stunning prose. The characters are beautifully realised, your emotions are relentlessly pulled along a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and throughout it all glimmers a thin thread of hope, whose brightness waxes and wanes as the story unfurls.
This is a phenomenal piece of storytelling. I really can't recommend it highly enough.

Written by Affinity Konar, Mischling is a beautiful descriptive story about a subject that is extremely difficult to accept. Though some of these subjects are difficult digest and believe they could even could have happened, Konar does an incredible job of showing us it was real and how it affected the people it touched.

The word mischling means hybrid or half breed. This word was used during the Holocaust by the Third Reich to describe a person of mixed blood. In this novel Konar focuses on the area later referred to by the survivors as the Zoo. This is the part of the Auschwitz concentration camp where Josef Mengele houses the children, especially twins, who he uses for scientific experimentation. The children are given more food and allowed to wear regular clothes, instead of the striped uniforms that adults wear. He has teachers and classrooms for the children and he wants the children to call him Uncle. When he studies the children, he offers them candy. But he was also known as the 'Angel of Death' because the experiments that he performed on these children were horrific. He would inject them with a variety experimental fluids and operate on them changing their bodies all so he could study the results.

In this novel, Konar takes the reader into the camp through the eyes of Pearl and Stasha Zamorski, twelve year old twins, who in the fall of 1944 are sent to Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. As identical twins who share a secret language and can almost read each other's minds and feel each other's pain, they catch Mengele's eye coming out of the cattle car. The outgoing personalities of Pearl and Stasha draw attention to themselves by not only the other children in the camp, but also they are focused on by Mengele. The plot explores the way that twins are connected, that if one twin feels pain the other also can feel a complimentary pain. When one twin is gone it as if the remaining twin is incomplete. The prose used in this novel makes the subject matter palatable.

As Pearl and Stasha are introduced to the bunker they will be staying in and the nurses who are assisting Mengele in taking care of the children the reader learns about who the two nurses are, "There in the laboratory, I knew only that we were flanked by two women who seemed to fall into interesting positions in the order of living things. They looked to entirely without feeling, their soft forms walled with protective layers. In Nurse Elma, this seemed a natural state; she was an exoskeletal creature, all her bones and thorns mounted on the outside - a perfect, glossy specimen of a crab. ... Dr. Miri was differently armored - though she was gilded with hard plates, it was poor protection, one that hadn't warded off all the wounds, and like the starfish, she was gifted at regeneration. When a piece of her met with tragedy, it grew back threefold, and the tissues multiplied themselves into an advanced sort of flesh with its own genius for survival."

So beautifully written that such a harsh subject become palatable and the reader does not want to put it down, hoping that for these twins, Pearl and Stasha, the Holocaust would not have devastating affects.

heartbreakingly beautiful, a haunting subject matter, but beautifully delivered. A book that leaves you changed.