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OLDER FICTION
Barker, Michelle

My Long List of Impossible Things

351 pp. | Annick | March, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-77321-365-1 $18.95 | Paper ISBN 978-1-77321-364-4 $9.95
(2) YA Immediately following WWII, sixteen-year-old German girl Katja and her sister Hilde become refugees and orphans after a Soviet soldier shoots their mother, blaming her for something Katja said. Katja and Hilde find a place to stay with a farming family, telling the family that the girls' mother is alive and will come to collect them soon. As Katja contends with, and attempts to process, more violence from the Soviet army (including the rape of a secondary character), perpetrated in the name of vengeance, she is dismayed to learn about the extent of the atrocities committed by her own country during the war. For example, she (perhaps willfully, as Hilde suggests) hadn't fully grasped the danger from the Nazis in sneaking to her beloved lessons at her Jewish music teacher's home. Barker sheds light on a rarely portrayed aspect of WWII's aftermath (see also Maria Kiely's Which Way Is Home?, reviewed on page 140). Her expressive writing helps bring readers into Katja's head ("My arms shook. I held them as high as I could, as if higher meant Yes, I surrender even more"), though Katja's naiveté and continued impulsivity, including vandalizing a Soviet officer's car, might have been more believable and sympathetic in a younger character. An author's note discusses the time period and Barker's reasons for writing about it: "to ask tough questions and face unsettling truths."
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2020

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