This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Sad and beautiful, the prose stayed with me long after I'd stopped reading. Lyrical prose and compelling story, it's an accomplished debut from Sherwood.

Can a man live a lie all his life?

Joseph Silk is a well-known artist of Hungarian descent. When asked when and where he was born he said London in 1945. This is a lie that begins his life of lies. He was, in fact, part of the labour force during the war, surviving the camps and long marches. His brother, Lazlo, is the only other survivor of his family.

60 years later after Joseph dies his granddaughter, Eva, is left desolate until she is contacted about a missing testament Joseph completed after the war. The life and grandfather she knew and loved was all a lie. She goes on a journey to find the real Joseph Silk and doesn’t always like what she finds.

Can she come to terms with how Joseph chose to live his life and betray his Jewish ancestry?

This is a very ambitious debut novel, but Kim Sherwood has done a fantastic job. Well-written, empathic and very sad, this book, although fiction, tells of a not so well-known atrocity of the labour forces and death marches as well as the aftermath of the war. For the displaced people, it did not end after VE Day.

My only complaint is the author tended towards too much detail in the wording. She used too many flowery phrases to describe the scenes and thoughts of the characters which deflected from the story and a lot of time the sentences did not make sense, and I had to re-read them and cut out all the silly adjectives.

All in all, a perfect read that would be even better after a good edit and a little rewrite.

Chester

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of this book to review.

Joseph Silk is a Hungarian Jew who was interned in a labour camp at the end of the Second Word War. He arrives in the UK as a refugee determined to start his life afresh and leave the past behind him. After his death his granddaughter finds a letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They have uncovered the testimony he gave after his forced labour. She travels to the museum to find out more about his life and discovers so much more about life and the human spirit within her grandfathers story. It’s a book about identity and and the human will to survive.

I didn’t think I would be able to finish this book as I struggled with the writing style, it’s heavy going in parts but it could just be me. I received a free copy of this book from Riverrun Publishing in exchange for an honest review. A favourable review was not required and all opinions expressed here are my own.

Eva's grandfather - the artist Joseph Silk - has just passed away; as she deals with the aftermath of his death, and tries to decide how best to deal with the works of art he created, she uncovers his remarkable testament - his history as a survivor of the holocaust.
For Joseph Silk was Jozsef Zyyad, a Jew who remarkably survives the persecution and reunites with his brother. As Eva peels away the stories of the past, her own life and relationships become involved.
An intricate and haunting narrative, a recommended read.

Joseph Silk is a Hungarian Jew who was "reborn" on his arrival to the UK in 1945 as a refugee. Prior to this he was interned in a labour camp in the last year or so of the War. Joseph chooses to forget his life prior to his arrival in the UK, however, following his death, his "testament" of this time in his life is revealed in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. His granddaughter travels to the museum to find out more out Joseph's life prior to 1945. I enjoyed this book, although I found the writing style quite difficult to get into at first. It is a story of survival, of secrets, of love and the importance of future generations knowing what went before.

There’s an important story here, a continuation of the documentation of the Holocaust, this time focused on the Jews of Hungary. Sherwood frames her tale not just as a story of the past but by connections with our present, not least the rise of the alt-right in all its manifestations.

Despite all this good stuff, I’m sad to say that I struggled with this as a novel, and as a piece of creative writing: the prose frequently feels overblown and self-consciously try-hard, and the info-dumps weigh the whole thing down – this is undoubtedly well-researched as we can tell from the afterword, but the history isn’t quite woven in as seamlessly as it could be.

I’m sorry that this didn’t work better for me: I liked the perspective of a Holocaust survivor who wants to write out his past, but too much else felt formulaic for novels of this kind – the curator of a museum who triggers the uncovering of family secrets, the two brothers and a woman love triangle.

This has the feel of a passionate personal project about it – I wish I could say that I loved it, but in reality I didn’t.