So I literally started reading this yesterday and finished it about two minute before I started writing this review.
It’s a really good book.
Intriguing, heart-breaking, maddening and in terms of historical hypotheticals, terrifying.
The book is set in England between 2012 and 2014 with a few flashbacks.
However, this England has been occupied by Germans and been part of the Greater German Reich since the Nazis won World War Two.
Spooky right?
It follows Jessika.
Jessika is a good German Girl. She loves her country, does well in school, is a champion figure skater and above all; she follows the rules.
Her best friend Clementine? Not so much.
And The Big Lie follows Jessika as she tries to negotiate getting into Skate Camp at the same time as, in Jessika’s eyes, Clementine seems to be losing the plot.
Why else would she be talking about genocides and a whole other world of ridiculous things that would never happen in the beautiful land of the German People.
Honestly, this book is hard to swallow at times.
I wanted nothing more than to give Jessika a hug and protect her but at the same time I found myself wanting to slap her silly and shout “WAKE UP!”
It provides an interesting look at people who grow up under oppression, dictatorship and the power of propaganda.
As Jessika says herself, she is a good girl. She’s not mean, or cruel or vicious.
But for want of a better phrase, she is the perfect Nazi child.
She believes everything they do because she has never known anything different.
Imagine you lived in a house with no windows and you had never gone outside. Imagine that is your existence for the first decade or more of your life and the whole time you are shut in this windowless house, your parents have told you that the sky is yellow.
Now if you have never seen the sky for yourself and the people who you trust the most have always told you that it is definitely yellow, you’re going to believe it aren’t you?
And when you finally do see the sky and see that you have been lied too, it is going to be a bit of a shock, am I right? Or am I right?
Might seem a weird analogy for children who have been raised brainwashed by Nazis, but two things:
A) Shut up. My blog = my analogy, so fight me.
B) I know I’m right.
So, if you like World War Two history and historical hypotheticals and fictional depictions of what could have been?
This is the book for you.
Even if you’re not, I’d still read it, it’s a really good book.
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