The Postcard by Anne Berest

I have increased the number of non-fiction books I read in any given year, and books with a narrative style like this one are usually more appealing to me. The author thinks back about her family life for several reasons, events that occurred in her life and she thinks back about an anonymous postcard that listed the names of her family members, most of whom were lost in the war. She sets out on a diligent pursuit of her family’s history, and every investigative step is followed by a tale of facts that her mother has somehow already uncovered by that point. The mother gives out information when she feels like it, although she has much more she could say, but leaves it for another day. Since that is not a format I usually appreciate when people are generally telling me a story, I wish the author had avoided the constant back and forth (unless she wanted us to feel as frustrated as she does at the roadblocks). The style will work better for those people who like to ride along with the narrator as they piece together the full picture. I am not one of those people, and that is one of the main reasons I struggled with the book. The content is unique – it focuses on an average family and their myriad struggles to make something of their lives, only to be blindsided by a war that they do not have personal stakes in. The family in question do not have a strong affinity to their Jewish identity, which makes for an additional talking point. I would recommend this book to readers who want to investigate a different angle of life during Hitler’s reign and the kinds of people it affected. I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.