Gratitude
Book By: Joseph Kertes
Blog By: Corey Trinetti
Dear Mr. Kertes,
Over the past few weeks, I have been engrossed in your novel Gratitude. As you may already know, this book was given to grades 8-12 in my school to carry on with this year’s theme of gratitude. Although I don’t usually read this type of genre, I was willing to give this book a chance as the first book I have read about the Holocaust.
Right from the beginning of the novel I was captivated by your writing. A very easy and effective style of writing allowed a rather inexperienced reader like me to jump right in with no problems. To add to this, the plot of the opening of the novel really caught my attention. Set in Hungary, the book opens with Lili crouching behind a wardrobe wearing a wedding dress her mother had given her earlier that day. While hiding, her cake is burning in the oven downstairs. What appeals to me about this is how well you can depict the tension of the moment. As well, your use of descriptions and imagery of the cake burning add much more realism to the moment.
What I also enjoyed about this book was your use of many characters. At first it was difficult to decipher exactly who was who and what their role in the novel was. Yet as the novel progressed, your lengthy character descriptions painted a colorful picture of each individual character in the novel. This allowed me to associate a lot better with your characters, both with their personality and due to the fact that some of them (i.e., Lili) were relatively the same age as me. Your lengthy character portrayals and scene descriptions also gave me a greater sense of realism to your writing. It didn’t seem like the characters in your novel were made up from little research, your hands-on research really showed through in your writing.
One element to your novel that I really did not enjoy was the sadness and despair it brought to my mind. This criticism has nothing to do with the quality of your writing; I simply enjoy reading a novel with a lighter storyline and not something as heavy as the Holocaust. All in all, I enjoyed reading your novel, because it was a change in pace and it gave me a perspective about the Holocaust which I had never heard of before. I would definitely recommend your novel to someone looking for a captivating story that will make you think!
Sincerely,
Corey Trinetti
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