Book Review: The Memories We Keep by Walter Zacharius

Unlike the last book I read, I actually finished this one! But I did take a long break in between reading Part One and Part Two, because I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it. The whole thing simply felt amateurish. 

I remember reading the first page of The Memories We Keep by Walter Zacharius and breathing a sigh of relief, because after reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the simplicity of the writing was refreshing. I will take simplicity over disconnected, false pretentiousness anyday. That being said, the writing was nothing special.

One thing I will say for the novel: the plot was spectacular. Set in WWII, it follows Mia Levy, a Jewess who has to fight to survive, and then fights for revenge. I believe the story was based on fact, and the fictional retelling had the potential of being an incredibly heart wrenching, encapsulating, and informative experience. The concept of the novel is right up my alley, but the execution is lacking. 

There was no depth of emotion, the action was written in staccato, and the author was telling me everything rather than showing me. Sometimes he told me Mia was feeling one way, but then told me Mia was feeling something totally contradictory a paragraph later. The suspense was not developed properly, and revelations were accompanied by an exclamation point from the author and a yawn from me. Everything about the novel felt disjointed. I never felt like I knew the protagonist intimately, and I didn’t feel particularly sympathetic towards her. I think that another author, or even a rewrite by the same author could do this story and the protagonist justice. 

A lot of the reviews on Goodreads think that the last part of the novel was vulgar and shocking, because *spoiler* the protagonist spies for the resistance by working in a brothel. I didn’t agree that this was the downward spiral of the book. Instead, I thought that it could have been an excellent exploration of emotion, determination, and a vengeful attitude that compels someone to do something they would never otherwise do. But again, the author’s treatment of it was clumsy.