"Day After Night"

Author: Anita Diamant
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2010
Pages: 294
My Rating: Do Not Recommend

I wonder if Day After Night would have been less of a let-down had I read it before reading The Red Tent, which I loved and highly recommend.

Synopsis (book jacket): Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Hebrew Bible in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters—young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe—in this intensely dramatic novel.

Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.

Diamant’s triumphant novel is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption that reimagines a singular moment in history with stunning eloquence.

Review: It's impossible to not think of The Red Tent while reading this novel and unfortunately Day After Night is a disappointing follow-up novel. I spent most of this book bored and it took me almost three days to read. It's not a long story, but I just couldn't get into it. Odd too, since I do like historical fiction and have read many good novels set during the World War II era.