The World That We Knew...

´But life now depended upon luck, not reason´.

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman is a gentle story about the intricacies of good and evil taking place during the terrible years of the WWII in France and Germany. It is also a story about strong resilient women and everlasting love that is stronger than the cruelty of death and goes far beyond it. 

Lea Kohn, guarded by Ava the Golem, and Ettie and Marta, rabbi´s daughters, are leaving the Nazi Berlin to France. Giving up a God that has forsaken her, inspired by Queen Esther, Ettie will join the Jewish Resistance to revenge the death of her sister. ´Vengeance was just beneath her skin, a shadow self, her true self, the one who had been holding her sister´s hand, the one who ran into the woods, who wanted to learn everytrhing she could be taught, starting now´. Ava, created by Ettie at the plea of Lea´s mother, was not made to have emotions, but she is developing slowly her own identity. I am not personally an expert on this topic, but I haven´t heard until now about a woman Golem. Ava´s character is evolving from  a clay-made creature assigned to exclusively serve his/her master to a curious being embracing life and dancing with her friend, the heron (a bird I´m almost sure I´ve encounter in a previous novel by Alice Hoffman I´ve read many years ago, but I cannot remember which one exactly), when no one is looking. 

When tragedies, both at the personal and historical level, unfold, staying alive is the most important achievement. There is no time for drama or overthinking. Running away at the right moment is life-saving. This is how the characters in this book survive, until the end of the war or just until the next incident. The Angel of Death is out in the fields and one must be faster than him. This quality of the characters, most of them young teens that are dramatically threw up from the childhood nest to the horrific realities of the fighting to stay alive when their parents are taken to death, is what makes the book a genuine realistic read. What would you do when you are given the chance to stay alive? Run for your life without never looking back.

Reading about encounters with death are emotionally exhausting, but Alice Hoffman is telling the story with such a beautiful voice, that one can come to accept life as it is, with humans the ways they are. A story which is first and foremost a Jewish story about terrible times that we are still trying to reckon with. 

Rating: 5 stars