childhood revolves around her gang of friends, a vagabond of a boy named Stevo, an abandoned mansion they affectionately dub 'Old Spooky', and her family, Her Polish parents and grandparents expose Ania to Polish culture and fragments of Ania's family's, especially her father's, experiences during World War II,
On the way to her parents' house to prepare for her father's death, Ania reads a newspaper article which brings back the memory of a tragic event at Old Spooky.
Questions from Ania's childhood rise up as the time left to pursue answers from her father is quickly diminishing, Middleaged Ania critically evaluates the events she experienced with naivety during childhood, trying to piece it together while seeking a suitable time to find out the truth, All the while she is also struggling with whether to keep her own secret buried,
B. E. Andre does a wonderful job of weaving in fragments of stories experienced by her, her family and community making the book convincing, With Blood and Scars tells Ania's story through two simultaneous storylines: one from her childhood, and the other during her adult life, Adding to the With Blood and Scars's credibility is that each storyline is narrated in a style unique to the character's age, Tenyearold Ania overdramatic and candid whereas the older Ania is analytical and subdued,
The book elegantly introduces readers to the immigrant community in Manchester during thes, The sprinkling of Polish words and phrases throughout the book adds to bringing the characters and community to life,
There was a little bit of predictability in knowing where one of the story arcs was heading but that didn't take away from the beautiful way in which the story was told.
Without Blood and Scars is told with a delicate fluidity that captures Ania's dilemmas with authenticity and compassion, I look forward to reading the next work by this author, Thank you, B. E. Andre for writing a little bit of my childhood story and revealing something about the lives of our Polish parents who served in the Polish forces or were interred in the Russian gulagsystem.
. I was raised in a little town in New Jersey not Manchester but we had Polish Land, too, The fictional touches pulled the stories together, The account of the inner life of a young adolescent girl was believable and poignant, I raced through this book to find the details of 'babcia's' time in Siberia the bit that was revealed was stunning, More please, from B. E. Andre Ania is returning to Manchester to nurse her terminally ill father, Witek, when she sees a news report that propels her nearly fifty years back, to events that had a profound impact on the ten year old Ania and have coloured her life.
This might sound depressing but there's a surprising leavening of humour and although I wouldn't describe it as a comic novel, many scenes had me laughing,
The story alternates between her life now and the events of,
Ania's complicated relationship with Witek, once an allpowerful tyrant who dominated his family but is now a frail old man near the end of his life, is well drawn.
Despite the subject matter, this section never felt mawkish or maudlin, In addition to nursing her father through his last days, Ania has a mystery to solve before Witek dies,
It is the story of the ten year old Ania and her friends that I really enjoyed, Events that shaped Ania's life and still haunt her are told through her eyes, Andre has done a great job of bringings life in south Manchester to life, Ania's relationship with her friends and family are beautifully drawn, She is a child with feet in two camps and the thriving Polish community, of which Witek is a prominent part, is wonderfully evoked, The complicated emotions of growing up in one society whilst also belonging to another are fully depicted,
The seeds of the mystery that still troubles Ania are sewn in the mind of the girl when she begins to consider the question, "what did you do in the war daddy" We also see the painful awakening of the realisation that your parents might not be the allpowerful paragons you believed them to be.
Outside her family, Ania and her gang of friends befriend neglected child Stevo, who awakes in her emotions she doesn't understand as well as a wish to rebel against her Polishness.
Stevo has a powerful impact on the gang which still affect their lives, especially Ania's,
Overall, an enjoyable and well written novel that introduces you to characters that live on in the memory, long after you close the last page, I have no hesitation in recommending this novel, A wonderful coming of age story for all ages! Andre hits all her marks in exploring issues we all deal with at some point from the pangs of first love to saying goodbye for the last time.
I loved everything about this book! With Blood and Scars is B, E Andres debut Novel. I truly hope it will not be her last, The story of Ania, Ossie, Gianni, Manuela and Stevo sucked me in, and I was unable and unwilling to get out, It was beautiful and wonderfully funny yet so sad it ripped my heart from my chest and squeezed it until I couldnt breathe,
What I liked about the book
Oh my goodness where to begin, I loved this book from beginning to end, The writing simply blew me away, and there isnt a single thing I would change about this book, Even though the book has an aura of sadness and pain, it is also brilliantly funny, The characters were wonderfully complex,
Anias character is awesome! I especially loved the tales about her childhoodher irritation with the adults preaching, her selfishness so typical of that age group, her lack of understanding for the pain suffered in a war she never experienced.
I couldnt help but feel immense sympathy for Anias father, A broken man struggling with the harsh realities of Nazi invasion and the horrors that came with it, His guilt over things long past and his experiences stained his life, making him cruel and rigid, yet he clearly loved his family and could be so tender and kind.
I so so so wished things couldve been different for Stevo, My heart just aches for him,
What I didnt enjoy that much
For me there wasnt a word out of place in this book, Nothing that niggled me, nothing that I would change,
Final thoughts
This is one of those books that I hope and whish and pray will be read by every single person in the world.
My second wish is that they would all love it as much as I did,
Will also be posted to my blog:
sitelink wordpress. com/
Very interesting read
I enjoyed this novel tremendously, It's more of a comingofage story than a mystery but the main character, a young girl growing up in the Polish immigrant community of Manchester in the UK, does "solve" a mystery of sorts.
What I most enjoyed, however, was the portrait of the AngloPolish community, which is very well drawn, It is especially interesting to read about how the Poles who found themselves in Britain after World War II were still haunted by it, This is both a historical comingofage tale, about a child of Polish immigrants ins England coping with the spectre of war that hangs over her family, and the story of the same child as an adult coming to terms with her father's illness and death.
Whilst it's a tale of two very distinct halves and two very different worlds these two strands separated by the decades are woven very skilfully and sensitively together so that, especially by the end of the book, it's very easy to see the girl that was in the grown woman of later events.
It's a work not only rich with historical event and detail, but also full of beautifully realised and utterly believable characters one of those novels you have to give yourself a little shake whenever you put it down, as you become so immersed in Ania's world that you forget your own for a moment.
This isn't always a comfortable experience whilst this is a novel full of love, it's also tragic and in places traumatic, Andre is never heavyhanded with this, which I think makes the hardhitting horror of life during wartime even more affecting, when delivered by a child who is not always fully aware of what the grownups are talking about.
I loved young Ania, The parts of the book that gripped me personally the most were the vivid descriptions of friendship, adventure and first love, told from the point of view of a young outsider trying to fit in to a community she desperately wants to belong to.
This novel is, in places, hilarious, Even the tragedy is told with such heart that it's almost comical
in places, I felt for every injustice she had to go through!
It isn't always an easy read subjectwise at least stylewise it's very easy to read, deceptively simple yet still vivid and beautifully crafted and as such I had to read it in bursts it's so moving I actually cried on public transport reading it.
Certain parts really got to me Ania finding Mrs Jelenska at the bus stop, Ania's response to receiving the Bugs Bunny doll and moved me so much that this book will remain with me for a very long time indeed.
A moving and thoughtprovoking novel that touches both on growing up in an immigrant Polish community ins Manchester, and about the lasting effects of the Second World War on the older generation.
Anias father is seriously ill and as she tries to find out about his past in wartime Warsaw and reconcile their relationship, new evidence brings to light an incident from her own childhood, which she gradually recalls.
The two threads her own childhood among friends and family in Manchester, and her parents experiences of the war in Poland, are excellently interwoven, with beautiful portrayals of family, community and identity.
The novel provides an excellent insight into the experience of immigrant communities, with characters and situations that readers can readily identify with, I thoroughly recommend it and look forward to more from B E Andre, B. E. Andres debut novel has shown the complex sequence between two countries and cultures through the eyes of Ania, I personally found this book interesting because of my own life episodes especially traveling and living in mixed communities, I equally liked the portrayal of Anias childhood and adulthood, Its indeed an amalgamated depiction of the immigrant society in Manchester durings and introduces us to the polish culture in a simple and amusing way with a pinch of polish words, which does give strength to the characters.
This book easily keeps us in track to understand the struggle of preserving both cultures faced by any immigrant and their progenies,
I liked Andres way of narration of the innocence and curiosity of little Ania with her funny and frisky gangsters especially, Stevo, Also I felt like being in Anias shoes to know what happened to her during war, Andre is amazing in storytelling to unwind the mystery of family secrets, When I read about Anias father, Witek, it reminds me of my late Beloved Dad who was strong and vibrant and then weak and helpless when he was sick on bed at an young age.
I would say that the book “With Blood and Scars” is a fascinating novel, well written that keeps all characters in our mind alive even after finishing the book.
I recommend this for anyone who loves human feelings, countries, cultures and nurtures the important essence of life: happiness and sorrow,
I wait for the next book from the author:
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and thought the the writing was exceptional, As a child of a Polish father and an English mother growing up in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire many parts were very easy for me to relate to,
I sincerely thank B, E. Andre for this superb descriptive account and memories many pages reminded me of the struggles and accomplishments of my father and his fellow Poles who settled in Lincolnshire and around the World.
I hope that there will be more to read from this Author Thank you, Time is running out for Ania, She needs to ask her dying father a vital question his answer is the key to how she will lead the rest of her life, She must force him to revisit his childhood in Poland in, a time when decisions about survival were made on the spur of the moment, a place where chaos undermined all previous morality.
Who is her father really Can she bear to find out
Another secret also torments her: an incident she filed in her memory store, Now the police have found the remains of a child in Whalley Range, Should she try to find the gang of friends from her own childhood days Or should she keep the secret of what happened then This comingofage novel is a tale of heroic survival against all odds: a lifeaffirming story of courage and hope set against harrowing circumstances.
It celebrates the goodness that can be found in all nations,