You know you've read too many WWII books when the atrocities don't make you have a lasting experience of distress in mind and body.
What stuck out to me from this one was the choice to make Herta, physician for the Reich and criminal against human rights, one of the narrators. Hearing her defense of what she was doing was creepy: she was just doing her job, just doing her part to help her nation survive. We saw her humanity, her love for her family, her crush on a co-worker, and her relate-able struggle of having to work twice as hard to be successful just because she was a woman. Wow.
I also appreciate Kelly's choice to not make the end of the war the end of the book. I felt like the book should be over about 2/3 through, unconsciously expecting that with the war over, life would continue as usual, "nothing to see here." How powerful to see that the end of the war is not the end of the story, and to see some of how the events of the war had repercussions far into the future.
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