This is the first book I’ve picked up from the 2011 Booker Prize longlist. By the end of the Kindle sample - where I usually decide whether I want to keep reading or not - I really wasn’t into the story, hadn’t figured the characters out and wasn’t especially bothered about keeping reading. I went against my own judgement however and carried on. And got captivated by the family story.

In retrospect it is hard to understand why all Jewish families weren’t taking every opportunity to flee from Nazism in 1938. This book does a great job of painting the picture of a pretty ordinary family in Czechoslovakia, with Jewish heritage but not really practising Jews, seeing jobs and opportunities taken away from them, being betrayed by friends and still not really getting how bad it was going to get.

As is pointed out in other reviews, the decision to send children to safety on the Kindertransport is central to the story, and I thought the “contemporary framing story” (phrasing stolen from Fleur) was necessary to show the after effects of the Kindertransport and made this into a 21st century book rather than one that could have been told anytime post-World War II. I completely agree with Fleur that it was an excellent decision to tell the main story through the eyes of the non-Jewish non-family member nanny though, Marta had just enough distance from the main characters to tell the story objectively whilst still being involved in the story.

A good book, that doesn’t get five stars from me because I found the beginning confusing, but I thought it was well worth a read and a Booker longlist place.