The Book Of Lost Names.

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                       CONTAINS SPOILERS

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. 

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war? 

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears. 

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 Heart -wrenching. Intriguing. 

Where to begin? It seems that the past few books that I read in this genre; took my breath away. The Book Of Lost Names wasn’t any different. As I read The Book of Lost Names , I felt as I was going back in time, and in the way I was. I have been hearing about this book for months now, and I have seen few good reviews. I would have read it sooner, but the waitlist for the book was massive. Now that I have read the book, I can see why. Holocaust is a hard subject to read about, and my heart broke multiple times in this book. I cannot imagine, to go through what Eva had to endure. Despite how hard it was and how others tried to talk her out of it, Eva didn’t let that stop her. Eva was brave. I was always afraid that she would get caught and get herself killed. She was passionate about resistance and helping the children. 

I tried to feel bad for Eva’s mother; after all, her husband was taken, ending up at the concentration camp. She made it very hard to feel sorry for her. She acted as if she was the only one who was suffering. Most of all, I hated how she treated Eva, how she blamed her for letting her father get taken. How could she possibly stop him from being taken? I understand that she was in pain, but she acted like a child. There were times that I wanted to shake her, to talk sense into her. I loved that Eva stood by her side, despite her mother’s treatment of her. That takes a lot of patience. Of course, I loved the dual point of view and the fact that it was from the same character. I did wonder why Eva never told her son the truth, what she went through. At the same time, I understood why she didn’t. She wanted to forget that time. 

I wondered about the title, The Book Of Lost Names , and the story behind it. The story behind the title wasn’t what I was expecting it to be. But, looking back at the book, at the story, it does make sense. The title fits the story perfectly. Both the cover and the title would capture anybody’s attention. If I didn’t keep hearing about the book, that’s what would catch my attention first. The Book Of Lost Names is another book that I can’t accurately describe all of my emotions; there were so many. I would highly recommend this to any historical fiction fans, especially if you enjoy books during World War 2.
Be prepared for an emotional ride.