Favorite Book of 2007

Anna is forced to become the mistress of the Nazi warden after her friend in the resistance is killed.

In the days afer finishing "Those who save us", I wanted to talk about it. Edmond humored me, but he wanted to make his own points about the book. One of these was: "Don't you think the Obersturmfuhrer was the most compelling character?"

Except I didn't. Anna was the most compelling for me.

I lost myself in the book -- read it, wanted to return to it when I wasn't reading it, didn't want it to end -- because I could believe that what was happening to Anna was happening to me. I could imagine that I was her.

I wanted it to be 1944 again. I wanted to be back in the bakery. I wanted Jenna Blum to write a sequel (crazy because the book already alternates between 1940 and 1997 and thus we "know" the following decades of the story). But why? The characters were starving. Anna was so hungry at one point that she got dizzy when she saw a mustard stain on the Obersturmfuher's jacket. She wanted to lick the stain.

I wonder what if would like to be hungry beyond being so buzy I skipped lunch.

Was that time (or Jenn'a book) so compelling because we crave to live in a time that is more laden with meaning than our own?