Book Snails Book Group discussion

This is the discussion thread for our Summer 2017 Quarterly Read

Those Who Save Us


Feel free to discuss plot points, characters, themes, opinions on the book, etc.

Just finished it today! I was actually surprised by how much I liked it, seeing as how it had no quotation marks, and switched between past and present, which are two things I usually can't stand.

I also think that the title of this book is perhaps one of the best titles I've come across in literary history! Not for it's creativity, but for the way it connects to almost every single plot point, character, and theme within it. Very smart choice by Blum :)

I don't want to go into a ton of details yet, because I don't know which of us will be reading it. How many other Snails are reading this book, or plan on reading it?

I'm not sure if spoilers are allowed, but this doesn't really spoil anything.

Stockholm syndrome fits this title. I wrote about that in my review.

JJ wrote: "I'm not sure if spoilers are allowed, but this doesn't really spoil anything.

Stockholm syndrome fits this title. I wrote about that in my review."

Interesting! I never thought of Stockholm Syndrome. Did Anna really like the Obersturmfuhrer enough for it to be considered that? Yes, that's how she was kept alive, but I don't think she ever really loved him or anything. I'd say more borderline grateful of the happenstance, because we saw clear indications that she hated him and couldn't wait to get rid of him. Trudy was guessing about why Anna kept the picture, but it was never clear if she had true feelings for him or not.

I think you could definitely say she developed a type of Stockholm Syndrome, but it wasn't based on love and affection. It was based on fear and pure survival.

Stockholm syndrome doesn't involve loving or liking the captor. It's more about identifying and/or making a connection with the captor. All hostages have fear it's identifiying with the captor on a human level that helps them to cope in the situation.

(view spoiler)[ Anna appeared to develop some sympathy to her captor regardless of him being a wicked man. She was able to be bold with him a few times (ex. her birthday picnic). Anna also thought about his personal life. Due to the physical abuse: Anna got to know him very well. She knew about all his little oddities. If Anna did not feel something for him at all she would not have kept the picture.

Another point, the Obersturmfuhrer showed feelings (even tough he was a demented man) towards Anna when he came back to her before he was leaving. If Anna did not have her child to take care of, would she have gone with him?

on a different note, why didn't Anna tell her husband who the real father of Trudy was? (hide spoiler)]

Glad y'all are finding this book interesting already! Not sure if I'll get around to it, unless a copy falls in my lap or shows up at the local thrift shop (our only 'bookstore').

If you are worried that part of what you post might "spoil" things for other Snails still reading, click the (some html is ok) link above the new comment window you've opened. You'll see the special formatting to hide text as spoilers, or other text formatting (bold, italics, underline, etc.)

Here's a bit of an explanation, if GR's directions seem puzzling:

(view spoiler)[
The hide-a-spoiler trick is this:

Type the special spoiler "tags" enclosed in brackets <   > like below (but withOUT the extra spaces inside the brackets), with your text to be hidden sandwiched between them like this:

      < spoiler > stuff that might be spoilery! < / spoiler >

becomes this:

      (view spoiler)[ stuff that might be spoilery! (hide spoiler)]

Note the opening tag uses just the 2 brackets:
<   >
but the closing tag always has an extra forward slash after the first bracket:
< /   >

I used some extra blank spaces inside the brackets above to keep the formatting tags from disappearing (kicking in); when you do it, don't use blank spaces!

If all that is too much trouble, just preface your post like JJ did, by saying that spoilers may follow! Try not to post anything that would totally give away plot twists or endings, until after everyone's had a chance to read the book.

(hide spoiler)]

JJ wrote: "WARNING: I don't see how to hide spoilers on here, but I tried to be vague.

Stockholm syndrome doesn't involve loving or liking the captor. It's more about identifying and/or making a connection w..."

Oh, I know! For me personally, I don't see it as Stockholm Syndrome, but then, if everyone read books in the same exact way, there would be nothing to discuss!

(view spoiler)[I don't know if she would have gone with him, though. She made several remarks about being glad that he was gone. When he showed up in the first place, she became furious that he was even there. She basically beat him up!

I think that Anna never told anyone anything for two reasons. One, like Trudy surmised, it was her way of dealing with what she had went through, and her silence was her punishing herself, essentially. She never wanted to think about that time ever again. How do you say to someone, only a year or so after WWII happened, "oh, well, Trudy's real father was a Jewish man who was tortured beyond belief in a concentration camp, and the very person who tortured him I slept with and used to stay alive"? I don't see how there's a way.

That also ties in with my next point. She didn't say anything because she couldn't bring herself to, and even if she could, how would she explain it and justify it? America lost over 131,000,000 people in the war. That's all Americans thought about. That's why Anna was never accepted. How, possibly, could anyone easily talk about their life in Nazi Germany, especially sleeping with an officer, if they felt guilt, and even hated the regime, like Anna did? (hide spoiler)]

Anna is a frustrating character, but incredibly complex. It's amazing how much we can glean from her, when she hardly ever speaks!

StarMan wrote: "Glad y'all are finding this book interesting already! Not sure if I'll get around to it, unless a copy falls in my lap or shows up at the local thrift shop (our only 'bookstore').

If you are worri..."

Thanks. I've never had to use html before. I finally got it to hide my spoiler!

Finished my review and posted it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Interesting discussion so far!

I guess for me, I had a hard time buying in completely that Anna became involved with the Obersturmfuhrer solely because of her daughter. I kind of got the impression that Anna was a bit of a detached mother, as she seemed to show very little "affection" for Trudy even when she was a baby . (view spoiler)[Remember when Trudy was born and the months after, Frau Staudt was more affectionate toward Trudy and treated her more like a daughter than Anna did. (hide spoiler)]. Not to say that Anna didn't love her daughter ...maybe she truly did but didn't know how to show it....or could just be the way the story was written, the mother/daughter relationship just never came across as very strong.

Speaking of relationships....another thing I thought was kind of odd was Anna seeming to have "forgotten" about Max. (view spoiler)[ Remember in the beginning, Anna was so insistent on Frau Straudt letting her join the Resistance and do the special deliveries because her whole goal was to perhaps be able to see Max at the camp. But then for the entire time she was with the Obersturmfuhrer, Max was barely mentioned. When that relationship ended due to the Nazis being driven out once the Americans came in, I thought for sure Anna's first reaction would be to find out where Max was and if he had died, to at least mourn for him or give him a proper burial...but nothing...Anna pretty much went back to the bakery and it was "business as usual" as if Max never even existed. (hide spoiler)] I guess this was one of the things that irked me about the story -- all of the relationships, whether love relationships, family, friends, etc. were all screwed up in one way or another, almost like no one truly loved anybody at any point and none of the relationships were truly genuine. Could just be me but I really found it difficult to feel anything for any of the relationships as they were portrayed in the book.

Bkwmlee wrote: "Finished my review and posted it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Interesting discussion so far!

I guess for me, I had a hard time buying in completely tha..."

I think Anna is just a hard character to understand. On one hand, we know nothing about her and her feelings, but on the other, we can analyze and assume everything we need to know about her, and arrive at mostly correct conclusions.

(view spoiler)[I also don't think she really forgot about Max. I think that, when she was forced to walk through the camp, and she saw the monstrosities that went on there, she really just kind of shut down, and didn't want to know anything else. Like she kept saying, the past is in the past, and she can't do anything about it. There was also two things she could do.

One, try and find out if Max is alive or not. If he is, then what? She'd have to look him in the eye and know that it was her own father that put him in that camp, and that, for the past five years, Anna had done nothing, except deliver bread a few times. She'd have to look at him emaciated and tortured and know that she's part of the reason why he went through this. And, also, if he did survive, and they wanted to be together, would it have been that easy? Germany is structurally falling apart because of the bombs, they have no government, most of the Germans still hate Jews as it is, the Red Army and the US are starting to take over the country.. And then, if he didn't survive, where would Anna be? Literally nowhere.

Or two, she could just accept what happened and moved on. She saw the destruction around her and knew that Germany would never be the same in her life time. She had no home anymore, she had no family besides Trudy, and then this nice American says he wants to take her out of this, and he could give her and Trudy a good life in America. Obviously, this is what she chose. (hide spoiler)]

There was a part in the book where one of Trudy's students say something to the effect of, "it's easy to say that now when you're just like, sitting in a chair," and I think that was a main part of what the book was trying to say. Of course it's super easy to say that you would have stood up and fought back now, you would have done this and this and this, but back then, when it was a new circumstance for the German people, it was a lot different. They didn't know what was about to happen, and what the ramifications would be. I'm not saying it was right, what they were doing, by any means, just that they simply had no clue. We have the privilege of seeing it now and being able to recognize it, but they didn't.

Almost every circumstance in the book had to do with morals and survival, and I think that's why it's so hard for us to grasp why Anna did what she did. None of us were alive back then, and we can't even imagine what it most have been like, for ordinary citizens, Germans, like Anna, who hated the regime, for the Jewish people and the POWs and the Poles and gypsys and the LGBT+ community, who were subjected to such torture that it's literally unimaginable.

Now that I'm writing this, I'm beginning to ask myself..though she's a difficult character and not likable, is Anna one of the best characters written, in the sense that there's so much to her that one reader alone could extrapolate this much from her, when she literally never speaks?