Between Shades of Gray discussion

I thought the ending was way too abrupt. I wanted to see Lina's reunion with Andrius!!! :(

I was disappointed with the ending, she took so much time and detail to develop the relationship between Lina and Andrius and the happy ending just seemed slapped on at the end.

I wouldn't call the ending happy - it was concluded - in a scenario like that, there is no true happy ending...

Christina wrote: "I was disappointed with the ending, she took so much time and detail to develop the relationship between Lina and Andrius and the happy ending just seemed slapped on at the end."

Yeah! It seemed like the author got tired of the book at the end.

you're right, I shouldn't call it happy ending, but the book did conclude a bit abruptly.

For me personally, the book was the journey and the important lesson it teaches humanity. It is extremely difficult imo to describe any circumstance at the end of such a horrific chapter as 'happy'.. But it was as hopeful for the character as was possible. I think the author attributed just the right amount of emphasis to the love story, as it was not THE story, but rather one glimmer of hope among the atrocities that occurred. So many more human beings were not so fortunate and to have wrapped it up in a happy little ending would have taken away from this IMHO. To know that she ended up with Andrius was enough hope for my heart to cling to, with the larger story leaving the biggest impact. For this reason I think the author accomplished her purpose brilliantly.

I'm assuming that Lina married Andrius but I wanted to see when they actually meet again and how she got out of the Cold

It was a bittersweet ending. I would loved to see more of Andrius, but thats okay. It didn't take away from being an amazing book.

I love when I learn about a time in history that I don't know much about. This was a sad, but great book. This is the kind of book that people need to read . . . more substance, less fluff.

Yes. I agree with pretty much everything you're saying. I sort of like it, though. It leaves you enough room to keep wondering. And I sort of like that. And yet it makes sure that we realize that she did end up with Andrius, and she and Jonas both survived. I thought that it was pretty good. I love the book. So great. Everyone should read it.

I agree with you Ali.

Ok, so this book was pretty good. I enjoyed getting a sense of the time period concerning Stalin and the entering of Hitler, but I felt as though the ending sort of dropped me in the middle of nowhere... I don't know. I was hoping for something more... stable. But personally I don't really enjoy those (and thus in the future everything was fine... or yup. The End.) sorts of conclusions... Do I make sense?? Kind of like Life as we Knew It... if any of you have read it (great book!)

Leela wrote: "For me personally, the book was the journey and the important lesson it teaches humanity. It is extremely difficult imo to describe any circumstance at the end of such a horrific chapter as 'happy'..." I could not agree more. beautifully said!

Ali wrote: "I thought the ending was way too abrupt. I wanted to see Lina's reunion with Andrius!!! :("

I agree.

I am rereading this book, and I agree with all of you on the fact that it ended quite abruptly.

No, I don't think so. I wish.

Yeah, I liked that too :)

I wish we could've seen the reunion between Lina and Andrius but knowing that they end up with eachother, together and married is enough for me:)

I actually liked that we didn't know how they got back together. Because in a situation like that, it probably would have been a long, rather boring time between the current ending and when they met up, and I would've maybe gotten bored.

I agree the book ended abruptly, however, we know Lina and Andrius married. It was the journey living through this period of Stalin's genocide that was the focus. Upon return home, they were still treated as criminals. A very sad period of history overshadowed by Hitler's Holocaust.

may be there is going to be a follow up..I do want to know what happened next, how were they rescued, emotional issues they went through.. For me this is the first book I've read on the Soviet version of Holocaust. Does anyone know anymore books on this subject.

Woman in Exile: My Life in Kazakhstan is a biography but during the same time period

Wave of Terror is set in Belarus during the soviet expansion to lead to the events in Shades

I wouldn't have minded if the letter hadn't been attached the end- it seemed a bit to tidy really.

Seeing as how Lina and her brother were there for YEARS before returning to their home, it would have been a complete disaster to have carried the book on that long. I completely understand why it had to leave off there and skip ahead to the future, but did it really have to be that far in the future? Couldn't it have gone to Lina and Andrius's wedding, or shortly there after, or SOMETHING instead of a letter? That seemed to leave the book hanging for me.

Ali wrote: "I thought the ending was way too abrupt. I wanted to see Lina's reunion with Andrius!!! :("

Me too! I also thought it skipped a lot of detail like how they got oyut of the camps and stuff.

Ditto! The ending was really abrupt. She could have left it open ended and wrote a sequel.

I think from what i've read ebcasue there was no getting out of camps...it was literally one day in camps, the next freed...wasn't like they had a grand escape or anything like that - I read a bio that covered a similar period in time, and that was how it ended as well

Yes, they started letting people out of the camps after Stalin died. For example some POWs returned home around 1955, some had lost half their weight. One Estonian officer was even a bit "sorry" after his studies in Japanese had to end. He had been taught by a former official at the Japanese Embassy in Moscow.

So no, this hasn't been a big secret, books like The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 (from 1973) have been published before and former prisoners have written about their experiences even before WWII.

Another book around that time, set in Estonia, is Purge.

It was. I wish there had been more information about her father; there was so little that it made it hard for the readers to form an opinion.

I think it was okay. I understand that this was somehow based on a true story. I loved, at least, that she mentioned her "husband", Andrius, so we know that they did reunite and lived happily for the remainder of their life. But, I do wonder what happened to her brother. If he was married, and with who? I wonder if he somehow fell in love with the girl who lost her doll as the years passed by. And their father? Did he really die on that prison he was sent to? Or years after he was mentioned by that doctor? I assumed he died since she never mentioned it on that letter sent to the "future", or "present day". Still, I wasn't disappointed by the ending. I loved this novel, it was very touching.

I thought it was a bit abrupt too, felt like something was missing. However, I liked that it was bittersweet: her family died (well most of it), but she still had some people in her life left. I would have also liked to see her see Andrius again, and maybe even see that Soviet soldier dude- Kretzky, was his name?

this was an disturbing book. I love the way she draws

I wanted a way better ending, I mean to have a little bit of happiness like Lina's reunion with Andrius and their marriage described a bit more.

I have not yet finished the book, but need to. I have a big project due in a couple weeks about this book, i hate to say this but can someone ruin the book for me. And tell me all the true historical stuff that happened? thanks

Brianna wrote: "And tell me all the true historical stuff that happened?"

I don't think that's possible, there have been books written about it...

But they were deported in June 1941 I believe, just before the Operation Barbarossa started, to Gulag camps. Many of the men were executed soon after they were arrested. Most of them spend over a decade in the camps, only after Stalin's death in 1953 they started letting people out, not very fast, though. There were also guerilla fighting in the Baltic countries well into the 1950s.

http://www.truelithuania.com/world-wa...
http://www.truelithuania.com/soviet-o...
Also from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populati...

Looking at the entire period of Stalin's rule, one can list: Poles (1939–1941 and 1944–1945), Romanians (1941 and 1944–1953), Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1941 and 1945–1949), Volga Germans (1941–1945), Ingrian Finns (1929–1931 and 1935–1939), Finnish people in Karelia (1940–1941, 1944), Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks (1944) and Caucasus Greeks (1949-50), Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Karapapaks, Far East Koreans (1937), Chechens and Ingushs (1944).

I wish I would have seen them reuniting but overall the ending was PERFECT and I was a mess because it was everything I could have asked for in an ending to a book like that. Love never fails.

The book is amazing but I would've liked to see Lena reuniting with Andrius.

My expectation for the ending was that Lina and Jonas would be brought back to their old camp since everyone was dying at their new one. There they would have a tearful reunion with Andrius. It was such an abrupt ending...I was shocked. It's sort of fun to create your own reunion in your head, and to create the ending with the dad...is he dead or alive? Imagine if Lina and Jonas went back to the camp, and both Andrius and their dad were there. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!

I actually liked the ending. I can't imagine a book like this having a rainbows and kisses ending. I was actually ready for an abrupt ending. This was a difficult book for me to read, but I'm so glad that I read this book. I thought the author did a really nice job on this historical novel. She managed to take me through a horrible situation but not make it as depressing as it could have been. Fabulous job! Definitely worth reading.

I'm glad that Andrius and Lina got together in the end, but I wished that the author would elaborate more on how they found each other.

I loved this book so much! The ending wasn't my favorite and left me with so many questions. Did Lina's father really die? How did she find Andrius? What about Jonas? What happened to Joana? This book was definitely something I would recommend to my friends and family!

I'm confused by the ending. Instead of releasing what happened to the public, she got married, then buried the account of what happened in the hopes that somebody would eventually find it. Why not share the information when she was released? Or why didn't she bury the jar when she was still at the camp? It would be a "here's where these atrocities occurred" sort of deal. Seemed really out of place to say "my husband and I bury this jar, etc."

and honestly, I found the ending too happy. Out of the entire family, only her mother died? It gave me the impression that a lot of people suffered, but the majority of families survived. I know this wasn't the case. I expected Lina and her brother to die. I expected her father to also be dead, and Andrius too would have died (granted, his mother worked hard to ensure he lived). Still, I expect his "We'll see each other again" to mean they'd see each other in the afterlife where things were better.

Rachel wrote: "Why not share the information when she was released?"

Share it with whom? Everyone knew what had happened, almost everyone had lost a family member or relatives, or at least neighbour.

Those it happened to, yes. But wasn't the world looking for answers after discovering what was happening? Couldnt she have shared with them?

Or, she could have displayed her images in an art gallery/exhibition. Her artistic skill was mentioned over and over again.

Rachel wrote: "But wasn't the world looking for answers after discovering what was happening?"

No, why would "the world" have done that? The Soviet Union had won the war and the Baltic countries had been annexed by the USSR with the blessing of the Western Allies. They were behind the Iron Curtain, living in a dictatorship. And even though Churchill and Roosevelt already had the correct info about the Katyn Massacre of Polish officers and that Stalin, not Germans, were responsible for it, they chose to blame that on the Nazis, too. Even though Poland was their own ally. Oh, and those in the Baltic countries (elsewhere) who had fought against the Soviet occupation were immediately branded as Nazis or fascists by the Allies. And, speaking from experience, that hasn't changed much since then, either.

In any case there were plenty of books published about the ethnic deportations and Gulag camps, some even before WWII and more afterwards, but the Western countries were not exactly eager to "discover" them, either. They were well known, at least in those few countries that had paid any attention to it. Most, of course, hadn't.

I honestly hadnt heard about these ecents to the baltic countries until this book. If i understand correctly, they never really were liberated. Families like Lina's were free from these camps but still punished under the dictatorship. Therefor, releasing her story would have meant nothing. They were still being controlled and they still could have killed her at any moment. Her best option then WOULD have been to bury it and hope decades later somebodg would find it. Is that correct?

Well, I was just told by an American that it (and many other events at the Eastern front, for example our three wars during WWII) is not important enough to to be taught in US schools. It has been common knowledge here ever since the war. I had probably heard about it before we even covered it at school.

And no, who would have liberated them? Most of them were released during the years after Stalin died, and there were millions of them, and also POWs, including Soviet ones who were sent straight to Gulag after they were returned to the USSR. Also it sounds to me that it wasn't too bad if she was able to draw, that was a luxury many of the prisoners wouldn't have had. I'm not sure would they have killed her, though, things got better after Stalin but it wouldn't have been worth it anyway. The Gulag stories are not that different and many people have their own.

Being an american, I can attest to a poor education system. Most of my WW II knowledge comes from books and movies i chose on my own time. In school, they focus heavily on the American Revolution and Civil wars. They leave little time to cover WWII. Usually its crammed in the last month of school, when kids are already checked out and focused on summer.

Here is a summary of what i was taught:
- Germany was bad.
- they had allies, but its not really important
- PEARL HARBOR!
- America enters the war and saves the day!!
The end.

Its pathetic.

And heres a summary of the rest of world history (in order)

-Greeks and Romans (sometimes, usually it was skipped or only talked about mythology)
- alexander the Great
- MUMMIES (egypt)
- there was some dynasties in china but theyre not important
- THE RENAISSANCE (for weeks)
- incans/mayans
- Industrial revolution
- oh there was a big war called WWI but WWII is more interesting. See summary above
-have a good summer! In the fall, we'll start back with THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!!

Things i never learned about in school
- anything in africa except the Egyptians. ( Oh, we took slaves from here. Thats bad, but look LIONS! )
- South America. (Do they exist??)
- Australia (lol),
- Russia, (it's cold! Their flag is red)
- Basically any couty on the asian continent.
- any european country that isn't england and france.
- the caribbean
-anything after america wins WWII ( seriously, 1940- present? Yeah, never taught....)

I could go on and on...

I do appreciate your taking the time to elaborate on the soviet impact. I admit im still fuzzy on that part of history. I didnt even know about the baltic situation until this book. If you have recommendations on books or sources to learn more, i'd love to read them.


(Please excuse any typos. This was written via my phone)

Sorry, I meant to answer. It's always difficult to recommend anything because most books expect that you know at least the basic facts and then you read more about a certain event. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is probably the most famous, then there is Gulag and also The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia and maybe even Surviving the Soviet Meat Grinder: The Politics of Finnish Gulag Memoirs.

But when it comes to Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, this is pretty much what happened.

From 1939 to 1941, after the Molotov-Ribbentop Pact where they divided Eastern Europe between them, the USSR and Germany were allies, and basically started WWII in Europe together. The USSR invaded and occupied Eastern Poland in mid September, two weeks after Germany had invaded Poland. They also had a victory parade together in Brest-Litovsk. In the spring of 1940 the NKVD executed tens of thousands of Polish officers and other leaders, the most famous being the Katyn massacre, and there were also deportations of hundreds of thousands of people, I believe.

In the end of November 1939 the USSR invaded Finland but failed to occupy the country, the war lasted 3.5 months (the population of Finland was 3.7 million, the Soviet population was about 170 million). Finland lost 10% of her land and 400,000 people had to be evacuated and relocated elsewhere in the country (they were not deported* to Siberia!). The USSR occupied the Baltic countries in the summer of 1940 (they had been forced to give military bases to the Soviet military in the fall of 1939, while Finland had refused the Soviet demands, the countries were even smaller than Finland), annexed them into the Soviet Union and purged their leadership, the same had happened in Poland earlier, while Germany, with the help from the USSR, invaded and occupied Western Europe.

The USSR kept pressure on Finland and was also planning another invasion in the fall of 1940 and asked Germany for help but Hitler had changed his mind and now, after the Winter War, saw Finland as a useful co-belligerent and the Red Army as weak. After Denmark and Norway were occupied by Germany, Finland was basically surrounded, expecting another invasion by the Red Army and, having used everything she had in the Winter War, was severely lacking any kind of ammunitions or weapons to defend herself and, again without outside help, was also facing famine, especially after losing some of her best agricultural land. (Stalin had also starved millions of Ukrainians to death in the early 1930's during the Holodomor, so he knew how to use food as a weapon.) The only country willing to help was Germany which was already preparing for the Operation Barbarossa. It was also well known that Stalin had sent tens of thousands of Ingrian Finns to the forced labour camps since the early 1930's and thousands of Karelian Finns in the USSR had been executed during the Great Terror in the late 1930's, so Finns knew what would wait them if the country was occupied. I assume similar things happened to other ethnic minorities, there were dozens of them in the USSR.

In June 1941 it was the time for the first deportations in the Baltic countries but just after that Germany invaded and the Baltic countries were occupied, again. Both the Soviets and Germans forcefully drafted men into their own army but some Estonians escaped to Finland, a kindred nation, because they preferred to fight in the Finnish military. The USSR bombed Finnish towns and Finland was again at war, trying to take back the land lost after the Winter War and to survive between the two dictatorships. Which she did and was never occupied by either side. (Note: Finnish Jews (and Romani/gypsies and Muslims etc.) served in the Finnish military and German soldiers stationed in Finland were required to salute the Jewish officers, they even had a field synagogue at the front and three were awarded with German Iron Crosses, which they refused, of course. There were also Jewish refugees from Central Europe living in Finland.) Unlike the Baltic countries that were occupied and annexed by the USSR again in 1944 (now as an ally of UK and USA and receiving loads of help from them all throughout the war), and also Poland was occupied, again. Finnish troops encountered a lot of stuff "Made in USA" among the war booty when trying to stop the major Soviet offensive in the summer of 1944 which had started three days after Normandy. They succeeded but it probably wouldn't have been possible without German help.

While advancing the Red Army also raped millions of women, including also concentration camp survivors and even Russians, but of course especially women in other countries. The people in the Baltic countries continued their resistance as "Forest Brothers" for over a decade after the war but that came to nothing, people helping them were arrested or killed and the deportations also continued. In 2007 there were huge riots in Tallinn when Estonians removed a Soviet era statue called "the Bronze Soldier" because Russians like to believe that they "liberated" the Baltic countries and that statue honoured their, Russian, victims. I believe Estonians call it the Statue of Unknown Rapist.

Here is an Estonian documentary about the time, some details are a bit off but it's pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9p9...
Here is a Canadian documentary, about the Estonian grandfather of the maker and his experiences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOO0w...

*I have to say that I was a bit irritated yesterday when an American claimed to know our history better than I/we do. (Hello there, if you are reading this!) Because it is an undisputed fact that Finns from the ceded areas were evacuated to the remaining Finland, they were NOT deported to Siberia (like this book seems to suggest, I've only seen the translation). But apparently she has better "facts" than we do and our "stories" are just different. I guess it doesn't matter that everyone in Finland knows what happened, that half the country has relatives who were evacuees and any history professor would give her the same answer as I did... And then she blocked me because I didn't agree with her "alternative facts".

Ali wrote: "I thought the ending was way too abrupt. I wanted to see Lina's reunion with Andrius!!! :("

EXACTLY, RIGHT! They go on later to say they get married and the Lithuanian people are held captive in their own land without the right to speak up about their pain, but we don't actually see any of that! This book was so confusing and I really didn't like her writing style.