The Yellow Bird Sings
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5.0 • 9 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Prepare to have your heart broken' – Good Housekeeping
Woman & Home Book Club Pick
Poland, 1941. A mother. A child. An impossible choice.
After the Jews in their town are rounded up, Róza and her five-year-old daughter, Shira, seek shelter in a local farmer’s barn. They spend their days and nights in silence to avoid being caught.
When their safe haven is shattered, Róza faces an impossible choice: whether to keep her daughter close by her side, or give her the chance to survive by letting her go.
A deeply moving novel about the unbreakable bond between parent and child, The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner powerfully portrays the triumph of humanity and hope in even the darkest circumstances.
'If you only read one book this year, make it The Yellow Bird Sings' – AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs Bird
'Room meets Schindler’s List . . . a beautifully written tale of mothers and daughters' – Kate Quinn, author of The Huntress
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rosner's moving if unsurprising debut novel (after the memoir If a Tree Falls) follows a mother and daughter's struggles to survive the Holocaust. In 1941, after Jewish R a's parents and husband are killed by the Nazis in Poland, she finds refuge for herself and her daughter, five-year-old Shira, in the barn of Henryk and his wife, Krystyna, gentiles who had patronized her family bakery, though R a is only able to extend their stay by sleeping with Henryk. Rosner is at her best in the book's earliest sections, as she conveys R a's efforts to balance comfort for Shira with the need to keep their presence in the barn a secret. R a cleverly enlists Shira's cooperation in keeping quiet by spinning stories of a young girl and a yellow bird that can voice the musical compositions written by the child. After a year of shelter, Nazi troops tell Henryk they will appropriate the barn, and R a reluctantly consents to a plan crafted by Krystyna for her and Shira to escape separately. With Shira hidden in a convent and R a fleeing through the snow-covered woods, Rosner switches between points of view to craft a wrenching chronicle of their separate journeys, though the conclusion suffers from schmaltz. This will offer few surprises to avid readers of Holocaust fiction.
