The Eighth Life

Finally got through this long, absorbing but very dark and tragic historical epic. For me it picked up in the last 100 pages when the narrator finally got to the period of her own life. As a bearer of family trauma, generational and national trauma, she becomes the recording angel of unbearable, unspeakable things, attempting to pass them on in a way that will not stifle but give impetus to an unknown future.

I read this book with friends over the course of two months, and it was good that I had so long to read it. It's a dense story, in length and events and characters and history, and it is also a story that you can become immersed in. The page edges on my copy are covered with book darts to mark quotes or important themes throughout, and there is much to discuss about the story.