Mischling

Mischling by Affinity Konar
Published September 6, 2016 by Lee Boudreaux Books
Rating: ★★★

"Stasha would take the funny, the future, the bad. I would take the sad, the past, the good."

Identical twins Pearl and Stasha arrived at Auschwitz as two halves of one whole. Pearl, the eldest, was sweet and musical, Stasha fearless and imaginative. Fresh off the transport train, the pair catch the eye of the notorious "doctor" Josef Mengele, who favors twins as subjects for his gruesome medical and genetic experiments. At Auschwitz, being a double can be a good thing. It can keep you alive for another day. But it's not only death that can separate twins forever in Mengele's Zoo. The so-called Angel of Death had the ability to take two girls who are one and cleave them apart for good. It's something the girls fear almost as much as the gas chamber.

Half of this book is set in Auschwitz, and half in the chaotic aftermath of the camp's liberation. It's written largely in thick, overworked prose that obscures moments of tension and genuine emotion. I never got a sense of any of the characters and found all but Stasha remarkably flat. Lyrical prose somehow hides the horrors of Auschwitz. This book tells the story of the torture of children by one of the most sadistic psychopaths in history, but manages to do so in a distant, dispassionate fashion. I haven't read a Holocaust book that's provoked less of an emotional reaction from me. I was disappointed in the ending, and details throughout seemed a bit historically... bendable. But mostly this book just failed to capture my attention.