the little liar by Mitch Albom. New York: HarperCollins, 2023. 333. *****
Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie." When offered the opportunity to save his family from the Nazis when they invade his home in Salonica, Greece, Nico tells lies he believes to be truths. Deceived by the Nazis, Nico tells his family and friends that they will be transported by train to new jobs and safety. The lie becomes apparent when Nico's family and friends are herded into a boxcar headed for Auschwitz. Nico escapes and assumes many identities to survive and never tells the truth again. Sebastian, his older brother cannot forgive what Nico did to his family. His childhood friend, Fannie, does what she needs to survive while looking for her childhood friend, the fair-haired and blue-eyed Nico. Their lives intersect and connect in the most unpredictable ways.
In my estimation, this is Albom's best work. I was hooked from the very beginning and yet afraid for what was coming next. Albom can weave a story like no other. Narrated by Truth, Album shows us the power of deceit and how love and forgiveness provide hope. I have grown weary reading Holocaust historical fiction. However, this one is not to be missed. When traveling in Germany, I visited Dachau, one of the first concentration camps. I felt like I couldn't breathe, the emotions were so overwhelming. That's exactly how I felt reading this book.
I highly recommend The Happiest Man Alive as your next read.
From Amazon...
Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in forty-seven languages worldwide. He has written seven number-one New York Times bestsellers – including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time, which topped the list for four straight years – award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and is the recipient of the 2010 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement. After bestselling memoir Finding Chika and “Human Touch,” the weekly serial written and published online in real-time to raise funds for pandemic relief, his latest work is a return to fiction with The Stranger in the Lifeboat (Harper, November 2021). He founded and oversees SAY Detroit, a consortium of nine different charitable operations in his hometown, including a nonprofit dessert shop and food product line to fund programs for Detroit’s most underserved citizens. He also operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which he visits monthly. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. Learn more at www.mitchalbom.com, www.saydetroit.org, and www.havefaithaiti.org.
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