Review: The Lost

The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was AMAZING. I was familiar with it but never made it a point to pick it up. I found it at a bookstore in (of all places) Kansas City, and took a chance. WOW. It is hard to categorize this book - part memoir, part world history, part American Jewish history, Mendelsohn covers a lot of ground. And I could not put it down.

Mendelsohn opens by describing his Miami Beach relatives, who would look at him as a child and comment how much he looks like a particular relative who died in the Holocaust. This sticks with him through his childhood and into adulthood, and is one of a few influences that drives him to want to learn about his family's history. Rather than be satisfied with "he, his wife, and their four children died in the Holocaust," he embarks on a decades-long quest to learn what actually happened to his particular relatives. In doing so, he really personalizes the tragedy of the Holocaust in a way that is both individualized and universal. He is meticulous in his research, and in his descriptions of his reactions to every piece of information he uncovers.

This is not an easy book to read - it's quite readable, but has a lot of descriptions of Holocaust murders that are, appropriately, awfully disturbing. But I also found it a hopeful book, and one that told a very complete personal story, from beginning to end.

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