THE BELIEF IN ANGELS by J. Dylan Yates is one of those
books that grabs on to your soul and causes you to fully
let go of your surroundings in order to take a trip into
someone else's world. It is full of tragedy and marked
with death, however, there is victory in surviving. There
is life in believing, whether that belief is in angles or
in hope for the future.
Jules Finn is a girl growing up in the seventies, to
parents who truly don't deserve the blessing of children.
She and her brothers are abused and neglected more times
than anyone should have to deal with, yet they stay,
because they don't want to be separated. This masterpiece
also shows the life of Jules's grandfather, Samuel. He
grew up in the Ukraine in the 1920s and lived through
some of the most terrifying years a Jew in Europe could
live through. The two stories at first seem worlds apart,
but as you continue this heart wrenching journey, you
begin to see they are not so different after all.
THE BELIEF IN ANGELS is so eloquently written, it pulls
and pushes you through dark things, and yet you never
look back, I wished only to find out more. J. Dylan Yates
created a character to believe in, a character to fight
for. She really makes her characters come to life in this
gruesome coming of age story. She creates a world of
tragedy and pores light in through the smallest things.
THE BELIEF IN ANGELS reminds us why we keep pushing, why
we never give up, and why we must always survive.
Growing up in her parents’ crazy hippie household on a tiny
island off the coast of Boston, Jules’s imaginative sense of
humor is the weapon she wields to dodge household chaos. But
somewhere between routine discipline with horsewhips,
gun-waving gambling debt collectors, and LSD-laced breakfast
cereal adventures, tragedy strikes with the death of her
younger brother—a blow from which Jules may never fully recover.
Jules’ story alternates with that of her Grandfather Samuel,
a man with a sad story of his own. Samuel, once called
Szaja, is an orthodox Jew who lived through the murderous
Ukranian pogroms of the 1920s and the Majdanek Death
Camp—but whose survival came at a price that’s haunted him
for years.
Sounds like a great read. I'm a grown up who likes to read YA, but I have a 14yr old daughter who reads as well. Do you think this book would be a good fit for her age group? Also, would this make a good book club candidate? My book club read The Book Thiief and loved it. Is this book anything like that book or Anne Frank? (Lisa Tarrant 11:13am November 9, 2014)
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