Cover Image: The Light at the End of the Day

The Light at the End of the Day

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Member Reviews

What a harrowing but great book
This book showed displacement so well and was very eye opening.
A great historical fiction book

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I loved this novel., it really had me gripped from the first pages.

It's a wonderful portrayal of a devastating time. There is so much hope pre-war that is it heart breaking, and it only gets worse.

The families plight is handled beautifully and it's a novel that will stay with me for some time.

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Excellent novel by Eleanor Wassenberg. Kraków 1937 and an impoverished artist is commissioned to paint a portrait of the youngest daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, the Oderfeldts. He considers her to be spoilt and precocious, and the family to have no understanding of the struggles in his daily life, they are oblivious to the dangers of their heritage. Life takes a dramatic turn as the horrors of the Nazi regime are rolled out and the portrait remains at the forefront of the storyline. A real page turner that has stayed with me since reading.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publishers Fourth Estate for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review

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When Alicia and her family are forced to flee Krakow to escape the Nazis, they leave behind all their possessions, including Alicia’s most prized object – the portrait her father commissioned of her. As they move from country to country, desperate to find safety, their once luxurious life in Krakow seems like a memory of another world. But Alicia never forgets the painting and what it represents, and after the war, she resolves to find the artist and recover what is hers.

This book is a tale of love, loss, suffering, survival and the bonds of family. It is an important and poignant account of a period of history we should never be allowed to forget. I found myself completely engrossed by both the story and the writing, and brokenhearted by the tragic nature of events, but they also show us that there can be hope even in the darkest of times - and it can be the strangest of things that give us solace and bring us back together.

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Oh I really loved this book - it was a slow burner to begin with, as the author laid the foundations of all of the interpersonal relationships. However, when I finished the book I just sat with it for a little while to gather my thoughts and feelings.

The first section is pre-Second World War and it deals with the wealthy Oderfelt family, and the events after they hire a young artist, Jozef, to do a painting of their youngest daughter Alicia. Alicia is somewhat spoiled and her older sister Karolina is hidden in the shade of her younger sister. While Jozef paints Alicia, he is privvy to the goings on in the Oderfelt household as tensions across Europe rise and the Jewish Oderfelts begin to understand the danger that they may be in. How Jozef reacts to different situations is interesting, and some of the things he overhears or sees, in terms of Anti-Semitism, are truly shocking and disgusting.

The next part of the book follows members of the family, and Jozef, as they flee, spend time in concentration camps and lose their loved ones.

What really pulled at my emotions was the fact that we are omniscient readers and can see when there are missed opportunities for the family to reunite, or for Jozef to find Karolina again.

The whole plot just reminded me that, not only was the war itself tragic, but the impact afterwards was felt for many years and generations. I felt this deep sadness at the end as things could have gone so much better for our characters had events been even just slightly different.

I agree with some reviewers in that a lot of time was spent on the initial section of the book but, for me, this is what contributed to my emotional reaction to subsequent events.

Thanks to Fourth Estate and Netaglley for access to this eARC.

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I loved this sweeping family story set in Poland and elsewhere during World War 2, following the well to do Oderfeldt family. The early part of the novel establishes their life prior to the war, largely following the process of a commissioned portrait of the youngest daughter, Alicia. Later we see their fall from grace and their exile from Krakow as Polish Jews.

The story is beautifully written - I love well-researched and well-written historical fiction, and this ticked every box for me: interesting, educational, entertaining, and beautifully done. I also liked that while a lot of fiction relating to the wars can be graphic and brutal, this novel focused instead more on familial connection and the impact of war on relationships.

After reading "Foxlowe" by the same author, I was excited to read her subsequent novel, and I wasn't disappointed - I think it's safe to say I'd read Eleanor Wasserberg's shopping lists at this point!

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for granting me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I was provided with a free eARC* of this book via NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for my honest review.

*eARC: electronic Advance Review Copy.

So, I have a soft spot for historical fiction, if you didn’t know already! I know WWII fiction is everywhere but I still go for it every time. You can imagine my excitement then, when I spotted this on NetGalley to request! The title reminded me of All The Light We Cannot See, which is another WWII historical fiction, but The Light at the End of the Day follows a Polish-Jewish family, while All The Light We Cannot See follows French characters and German characters. While of course I knew Poland was invaded by the Nazis, I didn’t know many of the details, so it was interesting to read about what was quite a different experience.

Before the war, the Oderfeldt family are wealthy, a sophisticated couple with two young daughters. The early part of the story establishes their life as it was before the war, which I really enjoyed reading. The father, Adam, commissions a painter, Jozef, to paint his youngest (and favourite) daughter Alicia. I love reading about art in fiction, and the description of the painting and the process was so interesting. The painting scenes as well really brought the two young girls and Jozef into their own, and gave them beautifully developed characters. Initially I saw Alicia as a spoilt brat, and Karolina as stand-offish and reclusive, but through the painting scenes their characters, as well as the painting, became more fleshed out, colourful, believable. Adam and Anna, the parents, came into their own as well, though Adam is more of a minor character than the women of the family.

Something I really enjoyed about this book was the displacement it showed. The characters are forced to move from place to place, initially fleeing their homes before being caught up in a flood of refugees fleeing Poland to Ukraine, in the hopes that the Soviets will arrive in Ukraine before the Germans do. With so many settings in the book, it would’ve been easy to have them all blur into one, or to have them all feel the same, but every setting the characters end up has a unique atmosphere that distinguishes it from the rest: even returning to a previous setting after a lot of time has passed feels completely different. Wasserberg manged the split across settings and time periods beautifully, jumping from country to country, backwards and forwards in time without creating any confusion or uncertainty: the reader is there every step of the way. The straightforward writing style allows for this, keeping the reader on track. While I do love stylistically innovative books, I think Wasserberg’s writing style was perfect for the story.

A warning to anyone who reads this book: it might just rip your heart out at the end. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the ending was quite bittersweet, and one seemingly small decision has a massive ripple effect. I’m not one to get emotional at books, but I did feel a bit emotional at the end. No tears, but definitely a sense of a circle having been completed and the weightiness of the implications of that. I can certainly imagine the potential for tears is there if you are someone who tends to get emotional at books!

Something I didn’t realise while I was reading the book, but found out afterwards was that the painting Jozef does of Alicia is actually a real painting. The painting in question, Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress by Józef Pankiewicz (1897) was visited by the author as a part of the writing process. I’m a big fan of ekphrasis and the inclusion of visual art in literature, so to learn that the painting so painstakingly described throughout the process was really exciting to me and of course, the first thing I did was look it up and feel a slight pang of disappointment when it wasn’t exactly as I had imagined it myself. Of course, nobody will ever imagine it exactly as it is. Even someone who’s seen it before might have a slightly different image in mind.

I did really enjoy reading this book and learning more about the invasion of Poland and the effects this had on the Jewish population in Poland. It’s been quite a while since I read a book set in WWII, so it was great to return to the era that made me fall in love with historical fiction (looking at you, The Book Thief!). I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone interested in historical fiction, of course particularly WWII. I enjoyed reading a WWII book set entirely outside of Germany, because it offered a slightly different perspective that I personally haven’t seen explored in fiction before.

Rating: 4 stars.

This review also posted on GoodReads and The StoryGraph.

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I feel it's of utmost importance for the reader to know this novel is based on a true story. In my view this info will help the reader enjoy the book more than he/she would otherwise. This is due to the characters being a bunch of snobs that the average reader will find impossible to identify with. The first half of the book is therefore not very gripping. The Lwow bit is dry and the same story one has read in countless other books covering the Holocaust. Only the last 30% of the book finally brings some emotions and some originality: in the form of Jews being sent to Russian work camps instead of the ever present German concentration camps. The horrifying experience aboard the trains and in camps will finally allow the reader to feel sorry for this characters, with the ending enhancing further the tragic reality of the Holocaust.

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This book was atmospheric, but all the descriptions made it also very slow going. I didn't find it very original too, so I'm afraid it wasn't for me.

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

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This was a mixed bag. I liked the original idea but this book did not really deliver what i wanted. The story was too slow and took forever to get going. The characters were just a little bit 2-d for me and i did not really care for them. This has potential but it just did not deliver it for me.

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A rather unsettling read with so many unfortunate twists of fate. The book is full of atmospheric descriptive writing.

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The Light at the End of the Day is set in Poland during WWII and focuses on Jewish family and their experiences during the war. I really liked this book especially how the author used different view points and jumps in time to tell this brilliant story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC

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