That being said it is both a familiar read, having grown up with begging her for stories about her life, leaning over her shoulder as she crafted this book back when it was a mass of word documents; and yet an also somewhat new and unknown experience.
Some of the perspectives written, particularly in the POW camp, are collections of memoirs, and stories from other family members, that Nana gathered. I love the way they come together, to shape her own personal journey. Though in the camp, she was barely old enough to craft a steady memory to look back on, her own feelings and emotions seep through in the retelling of her other family members and friends, that contributed to help her write the story.
She is able to look back on that part of her life with a great sense of healing, and having moved forth, while also connecting deeply in her writing to the trauma and fear that the war had on her as a young girl.
It is a potent and painful reminder that war lingers, long after fighting is declared finished. This is seen in Nana's Mother's health declining drastically, in part at least from the repercussions of war. In the community embracing Nana and her family when they came back to Holland, and in the way the war forced her to grow up far quicker than her years.
She also depicts the isolation of immigrating alone, at 16 years old to NZ, and studying nursing with very little knowledge of the English language, as effortlessly as if it happened a year ago.
I find her ability to recall conversations and small, impacting moments, helped to relay this as her story- her journey- rather than a blanket retelling of a moment in history.
Because I was able to connect to the story, in a way that was personal to Nana, I found myself quite emotionally impacted in a way I hadn't been by her story before.
I found myself imagining being in her shoes, which as her granddaughter was a very incredible thing to do. It gave me a new kind of perspective, personally and historically, to how life has changed since the war finished, and the way life goes on, after. Now, an experience marked as a history, to my generation. A history, we couldn't begin to fathom in our changed lives today.
Family connections aside~ I would recommend this to anyone wanting to gain perspective of life in POW camps, but especially the impacts of wars, to individuals and communities, long after they are declared finished. The often life-long impacts, that take multitudes to come out the other side of, and navigate a sense of ongoing freedom; a kind of new life.
And to any who has battled the absence of faith and hope, in humanity, this story is a testament to finding it, and finding it again.
That in war and loss, faith can be found, and clung to. To help rebuild a life, that lives on.
Reviewed by Lily
Catalogue link : Two Slices of Bread
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