Book Review: Hitler's Daughter, by Jackie French

[pameladlloyd]

I just finished reading Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French and wanted to share my GoodReads review with you.


Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an impressive book and one I can't recommend highly enough.

Anna tells stories her friends love to hear. Then, one day, she starts to tell a deeper, richer story that's both more compelling and more disturbing than the stories she's told before, about a girl, maybe an imaginary girl, and maybe not, who is Hitler's daughter. In response, Mark, the viewpoint character, begins to ask questions about inheritance, what it means to care for others, how to cope with loving someone who does wrong, and how to understand what's really right when everyone around you agrees that bad actions are right, as he tries to understand what he hears and how he feels about the story. The adults in his life want to be supportive, but are mystified by his questions and concerns. Often, they're busy or don't answer very satisfactorily, but when Mark asks his dad whether kids are evil if their parents are, his dad responds thoughtfully and without getting angry, even though he doesn't understand why Mark is so worried.

The more I think about this book, the better I think it is. The issues are very real and very much a part of what we all must deal with. All of us would do well to revisit questions about the issues and feelings, because this book isn't so much about Hitler, as about right and wrong, and how we develop our understanding about what they are.


View all my reviews.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, from what you say, I'd very much like to read that book. I tend to shy away from anything having to do with Hitler because Hitler is such a shorthand for "evil beyond all questioning and that we can feel safe abhorring," but from what you write, this story doesn't so much involve handwringing over the historical Hitler as it does asking questions about the nature of evil itself and how to recognize it. I'll have to look for it.

Really, I'm very interested in what evil actually is--and how people end up doing really horrible things. I read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem to see if that would help me get it. The banality of evil is definitely an interesting concept.

So--thanks for putting me on to this. At some point, I'll definitely read it.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Wow, from what you say, I'd very much like to read that book. I tend to shy away from anything having to do with Hitler because Hitler is such a shorthand for "evil beyond all questioning and that we can feel safe abhorring," but from what you write, this story doesn't so much involve handwringing over the historical Hitler as it does asking questions about the nature of evil itself and how to recognize it. I'll have to look for it.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Really, I'm very interested in what evil actually is--and how people end up doing really horrible things. I read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem to see if that would help me get it. The banality of evil is definitely an interesting concept.

I'm not familiar with that book. Now that you've read it, do you recommend it?

Karl introduced me to the concept of the banality of evil and it's one we've discussed several times--unfortunately, within the context of much of what has occurred in recent years, although we've also touched on the Holocaust. I think that so often when we discuss the atrocities committed, the people who did those things are so demonized that it's difficult for us to even conceive of the idea that most of them also had lives that included family and friends.

Hitler's Daughter is a very quick read; I think it was probably written with middle school kids in mind, so by adult standards, it's very short.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Eichmann in Jerusalem was very interesting from a historical point of view: Hannah Arendt had actually been at the Nurenburg trials, and a lot of research went into the book. There were all kinds of details about the mechanism of the Nazi state that I had no idea about, and the national reactions to the Nazis' "final solution" were also interesting and unexpected. I had never had such a fine-grained look at this piece of human awfulness.

It was definitely worth it for me. I trusted Arendt as a writer. I wouldn't recommend it, though, unless you actually do want to read about all that stuff. If you do, then it's very good.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I know that reading about the atrocities would be very uncomfortable, but I think that it's the sort of reading that can deepen an author's work. Painful, but still worthwhile.