Wunderland: Jennifer Cody Epstein (A book recommended by a celebrity you admire)

This book was recommended by Jamie Ford, who wrote Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet which was a book I greatly enjoyed, so I admire his reading recommendations!

Wow. This was a hard one to read. It wasn't hard because of the writing or the language, but because of the content. Epstein did an incredible job making these historical events and people real and present even with the time gap between now and then. She brought history to life with her words which is an incredible feat that many authors can't accomplish.

I enjoyed Epstein's writing style. She was very captivating and easy to follow. She wrote her characters very well and made them true real people during the time I was reading this book. She breathed life into her words and the people of Wunderland were people of my life for the time.

The only thing I didn't understand which led me to not like was her order of writing. Perhaps on a second read through I could focus on the effects of the order of events, and that would lead me to understanding why she spaced it as she did. The jumping back and forth between characters works really well, but she's also jumping back and forth out of chronological order, and those two jumps made it challenging to keep up with the chapter changes. I'm sure, however, that there is a very good reason for doing this; I'd just need to take the time to figure her out more.

I'm also not sure if Epstein wants us to understand and therefore like Ilse more at the end. Renate seems to open her heart again to Ilse, but I simply found her weak for that. Ilse was a monster, a truly horrible woman, and she does nothing to prove otherwise to me. Her letters are full of nonsense excuses, never any true apology, so I can't understand how anyone could appreciate or forgive Ilse in the end (aside from my Christian upbringing and Christ's commands to forgive everyone.).

The last comment I have is that I think we could have used more of Ava's character. She was included, but her inclusion was so disjointed and incomplete that I had a hard time understanding her involvement. I know that we needed her in there for the ending, but I never fully understood why she received so much attention throughout the book. Perhaps it's just to keep proving that Ilse was a horrible mother, but I didn't need to see that to dislike Ilse as much as I did. I think the book could have benefited from either more of Ava's character, to develop her more, or less of her character, to develop the rest of the book more.