Fabulous Fiction Firsts #571 (and truly a small gem)

Tue, 12/22/2015 - 10:14pm by muffy

As I was getting ready my Small Gems blog for this December, my copy of Anna and the Swallow Man * * arrived on my doorstep, and my choice is obvious. "I have never read anything quite like this book", wrote the reviewer for The Guardian, and neither have I.

"When Anna Lania woke on the morning of the sixth of November in the year 1939 - her seventh - there was several things that she did not know", one of them being her father, a Linguistics professor at the Jagiellonian University, would never return, having been rounded up by the Gestapos in Occupied Poland.

Turned out by a fearful family friend, hungry and cold, Anna met a tall and exceedingly thin man who not only shared Anna's command of languages, but he could also speak to the birds, and seemed to have more than a little magic up his sleeves. As the pair wandered the countryside together for years, they dodged bombs, tame soldiers, and in the process, the Swallow Man taught Anna lessons of survival while remaining an enigma until the end.

"Subtly crafted with an intelligent structure and beautiful language, this was a compelling and thought-provoking read." "Artful, original, insightful." Marketed as Teen fiction, Anna will nevertheless appeal to readers of any age.

A readalike for The Book Thief, it too, is "a story about growing up during a time of monumental changes. It reveals life's hardest lesson while celebrating its miraculous possibilities."

Debut novelist Gavriel Savit holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he grew up. An an actor and singer, he lives in Brooklyn.

* * = 2 starred reviews