Let Me Tell You A Story: A Memoir Of A Wartime Childhood by Renata Calverley is published in hardback by Bloomsbury, priced £16.99 (ebook £8.54). Available now.
Let Me Tell You A Story is retired English teacher Renata Calverley's account of her extraordinary survival of the Second World War as a very young child.
We first meet Calverley in 1939, leading a happy and innocent childhood in Poland with her Jewish mother and grandmother, while her father is away in Europe fighting with the Polish army.
However, as the Nazi occupation tightens its grip, Calverley's life becomes a nightmare filled with monsters far worse than those in the fairy stories she knows.
From a bleak existence in a grim ghetto to a sad and frightening time in an orphanage that Dickens's Oliver Twist would recognise, Calverley somehow survives while those around her perish.
Calverley's decision to write in the first person through the eyes of a child serves to magnify the horror of her experiences, but unfortunately also sometimes makes the reader question the veracity of the dialogue and intricate details that she recounts.
Nonetheless, it is a fascinating story that will keep the reader gripped throughout.
7/10
(Review by Zahra Saeed)
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