閱讀越悅讀 - Hana's Suitcase

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for years(sssss), an university friend gave it to me when I was still in school. I didn't open it until today... Once I started the first pages, I couldn't stop, I just have to cry out: "SUCH A GOOD BOOK!"

I feel stupid for not reading it until today, I wonder whether anything would have changed in me for all these years if I have read it then? (thinking...) but it's ok, because I believe that I wouldn't have appreciated it the same way.

Apparently this Hana's story is very popular, again - I didn't know until I finished the book and start writing this post. I won't say much about the book content here, because you can easily find information online, and I encourage to do so.

This book is a true story that takes place on three continents over a period of almost seventy years. It brings together the expereinces of a girl and her family in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 40s, a young woman and a ground of children in Tokyo, Japan, and a man in Toronto, Canda in modern times (intorduction P.V). It is not the first time to read about or watch about Adolf Hitler wanted to rule the world, and his brutal acts to eliminate Jewish people from the face of the earth. However, it is the first time I feel this incident is actually related to us - but not just a far history. While I was reading the book, images from the movie The Pianist kept coming into my mind; I believe it was the combination of the words of Hana's Suitcase and the images from The Pianist that brought this  Jews' horrible past experience so deep into my heart this time.

What touches me the most is the song that Hana likes to sing called "Stonozka":
Her life is not a piece of cake.
Imagine how she suffers when
She walks until her tootsies ache.
She's got good reason to complain.
So when I want to cry the blues
I just recall the centipede.
Consider walking in her shoes
And then my life seems sweet indeed.
I can imagine we, as Canadians in modern time, sing this song when we are to whine for boss being too mean, working hours too long, TV programs too boring, not having enough sleep, and you name it. However, I can never imagine how a 12/13 years old girl, who was forced to separate from her parents and her only brother, could sing this song when she was boarded onto the darkened rail car until there was not an inch of room left in the train, with no air, no food, no toilet for a day and a night. (.... how............)

Here I want to share with you a scene from The Pianist