I already knew I was going to love Salt to the
Sea. I also already knew it was going to make me feel all the
things. That it was going to hurt. I was
right.
I mean it didn’t hurt as much as Between
Shades of Gray - which FYI I am still not over, will likely never be
over – but still, it kind of got me right in the chest because Ruta Sepetys has
this way of making you feel like you’re actually living the words on the page
and the words on the page whilst utterly beautiful do not depict the happiest
of times. I mean I won’t lie; I went into this book with an actual sense of
dread. At the very best this would be bittersweet; it very likely wouldn’t even
be that and yet, I wanted to read it so badly.
Salt to the Sea is set in 1945.
The second World War is drawing to a close and thousands upon thousands of
refugees are desperately making their way to what they can only hope will be
freedom; a second chance; a new start. Our story for the main part is that of a
Lithuanian nurse, a Prussian soldier, a young Polish girl (and a young
strangely desperate and completely sociopathic Nazi.)
They first three, and the people they’re travelling with are
desperate to board a ship (the Wilhelm Gustloff, which, please please Google
it. It makes the Titanic look like a storm in a teacup. 1053 lives were lost
when the Titanic sank; around 9400 lives were lost when the Wilhelm Gustloff
went down) which will take them to some kind of promised land – any place will
be better probably than what they’re walking away from. & they are walking,
they’re walking miles.
Sepetys picks you up, and she unceremoniously sets you down
in that abandoned barn, on that dusty road, on that harbour where people are
fighting to be allowed passage; your feet hurt and your hearts hurts and your
stomach rumbles and you’re lonely and terrified and still somehow kind of
hopeful and you feel like you know Joana who has left so much behind and is
carrying around all this guilt and yet still puts
everyone else before herself; the Poet who you just want to love and protect
because he’s this old man and he’s seen so much; Florian who pretends he’s
tough but you know really isn’t and who has secrets of his own; Emilia who,
well, hers is a story that you need to read really, but be prepared for your
heart to fracture. You know them and you love them and you ache for them more
so because whilst you know that they perhaps
didn’t exist, thousands like them did, that those things happened to very real
people and there’s no hiding from it.
There’s this one scene where a woman throws her
baby at the ship so desperate is she to make sure that her child gets away from
what has become a living hell and I swear I made this weird sort of keening
noise. It’s two sentences at most and it still hurts like a sucker punch. It
hurts because it might not be true but yet it still really is. This shit
happened, Jesus look at the world right now. This shit is
still happening and I don’t know perhaps that’s what makes this book
so powerful and so poignant. What happened here, 70 years ago and that seems so
atrocious and so unbelievable is a thing we’re seeing every time we turn on the
television (and don’t get me started on how my stomach dropped when I drove
through Calais a couple of weeks ago) It’s unreal but it’s so real. It’s unreal
that it happened then, but it did. It’s unreal that it’s still happening, and
yet. And yet.
Sepetys has a talent. Not many people could write a novel
with 4 very different, equally strong voices and not have you feeling lost of
overpowered. Sepetys does, each character is important, each story matters and
despite the switch from one point of view to another the story doesn’t lose
pace for a second. & God but it’s well researched. SO well researched.
Has it gotten under my skin like Between
Shades of Gray? No, but I think perhaps that’s because I was
prepared for it . I went into BSoG not knowing what I was about to read; I went
into this with my heart protected in a layer of bubble wrap. However, this,
like Between Shades of Gray is a story of
survival, of hope when everything seems hopeless and the sheer strength of the
human spirit. It’s a difficult book, but it’s one that is so worth reading
because it’s important and it’s beautiful. And there’s a nod to Between Shades of Gray in there too which made my fangirl
heart flutter.
