I also liked how the detailed description of the baking of bread was a metaphor for life, love, and even death. However, the suggestion that Aleks could not help his murderous instincts, and relating this to boys who were recruited by the Nazis being conditioned to become killers against their wills, was a disturbing, and I’m not sure fair, comparison. The almost supernatural way, Minka, recognized these issues when everything in her experience should have closed her off to these nuances of character dilemmas, and how she incorporated them into her story almost unconsciously was a nice touch.
My favorite aspect of this book was the allegory of the vampire story-within-the-story, which attempted to work out the complicated moral issues of Aleks, the vampire, who was evil, not by his own choice, but because of circumstances which paralleled Josef’s life experiences. Coming from the standpoint of an author, I can’t imagine what kind of planning, research, and editing this book required to achieve this flawless final product. I loved the alternating narration from the different characters, the voices from the past, as well as the interweaving of Minka’s vampire story told by her character, Ania. Her real struggle, of course, is dealing with her own ideas of guilt, forgiveness, and moving on with life. When he confesses he was a Nazi war criminal in his previous life, she is torn between helping him die as he requests, or turning him in to the FBI. Sage is battling guilt of her own when she meets 95 year old Josef, who is dealing with his own demons.
Sage, the grand-daughter of Minka, a Holocaust survivor, befriends an old man in a grief group. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult hooked me from the beginning.
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