Book Review: “The Child Who Lived”, by Ellie Midwood

Reading time: 5 mins

“So the child who wasn’t supposed to survive would become a child who lived.”

★★☆☆☆

I read as much as I can about WWII, and pretty much everything I could find about the Holocaust.

When I saw this author and all the books on the topic she wrote, it was like Christmas. But then…

“Welcome to our fine German resort, sister.”

Austria, 1942. Lore is a strong willing woman that will not sit in silence while Nazi laws are implemented. Working at the Agency for Jewish Immigration, she has a privileged position helping to issue false documents. When she gets discovered and sentenced for betrayal, she will be sent to Ravensbrück, starting her fight for survival… and soon not just her own. Can a child born in a concentration camp ever know freedom?

“Your husband will be so happy to see you again.”

I was initially in love with The Child Who Lived.

The prose is fresh, and the character of Lore promises to be a strong and resourceful one. Not to mention the story of survival, who wouldn’t rally behind her in her fight for freedom and justice?

Well… me, after trying to ignore some of her shortcomings, and not being able to stand her anymore from 70% of the story on. I pushed through, because I felt I wouldn’t have picked it up again if I had indeed put it down. It wasn’t mere curiosity that made me finish it, but I felt I owed that much to Ellie Midwood, and I secretly hoped that it would get better again.

But let’s go in order.

The book opens with Lore and her husband in court, the latter asking for divorce. She’s strong and she doesn’t take nonsense from anybody. But…

There is a difference between being a strong character and a subversive one, and another not to give a sh*t about anything. Lore’s scale tipped dangerously towards the second case, the worse case scenario.

From the first few chapters, we can understand why Lore acts like this. Apart from being imprisoned in a concentration camp, from which we’ll learn the full extent of the horror only later, her life wasn’t easy before either.

Her husband was a selfish man, with outdated ideas (common back then), and that blamed her on his inability to procreate. You know, the base “meany” package that makes for a stark contrast when you compare him to the angelic Wolfgang she will fall in love with later.

And how will she repay this man who can do no wrong? Imposing a choice on him, well aware that he will go to any length and risk his life, to defend Lore’s and his child’s.

The lawyer was just singing praises of Lore, of how loyal she was, of how devoted if not to her husband, to the sanctity of marriage: she was in the perfect position of being with Wolf, and all they did was talk. I don’t know how to break this to him, but… err… two chapters after that, she becomes pregnant by Wolf. Whoopsie-daisy!

And here my favourite part of The Child Who Lived comes into play.

Minor spoiler: she will end up in a brothel, and will find herself in the position of leader. The rules were very strict, and besides the inmates receiving two shots for their visit, just in case, they were required to wear prophylactics. The author describes crates of them. Keep it in mind.

Now, when she met Wolf, he was an inmate that just wanted to talk. Only after knowing the main character better, will he come visit her at night, and… you know. Oh, by the way: chit-chat was forbidden in those 20 minutes in heaven for the inmates, and hell for the brothel girls. There is even a scene in which a pink triangle, a denomination for homosexuals, is forced to fake coitus with Lore: the SS is constantly watching (yes, there is no end to the horror). How did Wolf avoid that inconvenience with the guards? By corruption? We’ll never know.

Anyway, he doesn’t need to pay just to meet with her now. And here, at the famous 70% of the story, the magic happens.

“It was meant to be.”

Do you remember the details of the crates of prophylactics? Good. Add to this fact the knowledge that an eventual pregnancy will end with the child’s death, and the mater sent back to her concentration camp.

…they don’t use them. For the sake of the plot, they don’t even use prophylactics.

When Wolf discovers that Lore is pregnant, he’s desperate and wishes he would have been more careful. Duh.

Her reaction?

We never used them, because those are for brothel visitors and brothel girls and we are neither.
Not your fault. Not mine either. It was meant to be.

Yes, yes it was indeed meant to be. By the author of the book!! It’s such an easy plot device, and one that makes you roll your eyes for minutes. Why. Whywhywhy.

I’m also not that surprised that there is an easy way for the advancement of the plot: we’re almost at the end of a story in which we’re supposed to see how a child survives in the concentration camp, but it was not even introduced yet. Not that this makes much of a difference, as you’ll see by reading.

Now the savvy Wolf has another thought: what will happen to her? The child is condemned, but he doesn’t want to lose Lore, at least. He’ll do anything for her, the pure good man she falls for. He suggests abortion, but Lore is adamant. And what is his reaction? Flip the switch, and her wish is her command. It all happened so unnaturally quickly.

Even as bitter as I am writing this (can you imagine while I was reading?), I can understand the change of mind of Wolf. It’s their child, and it’s an act of rebellion too. But… could Lore have just thought one second of what she was forcing on him? Because she was well aware that Wolf would have stepped up for both of them.

And from now on, Lore will also flip the switch, and become selfish and risk other’s life for her decisions, something the author will pass as “girls’ love” between her and her friends. Sisters for life, huh?

So yes, if before you could say that she was tough, here she is just madness-driven. Sorry, “motherly-love” driven. If before you can say that she had outbursts towards guards out of frustration or defiance (and a really stupid way of resisting her oppressors), here you can see that it was just her being her all along. You just can’t pretend any longer.

Final Thoughts

I praise Ellie Midwood for wanting to talk about such a difficult topic, made even more so by the less-known prostitution women had to endure in Mauthausen.

She clearly knows what she’s writing about, and with delightful prose. It’s just that… she bends reason to the limit, for the higher purpose of the plot. She also fails to represent how prisoners could have felt in those conditions: we will never know, such horrors are impossible to imagine. That being said… I’ve read many authors that did a better job at that. Same goes for their actions. Some were even first-hand retellings of the horror, so I’m going to trust their judgement.

I also didn’t like how she imbued the book with the toxic feminism the protagonist was the embodiment of. And I specifically specified toxic feminism: Lore gets away with too much, with the simple excuse that “she’s a strong woman”.

It was not a bad book per se, it’s just that I can’t let those things, that most people would consider “minor”, slip. If you enjoy historical fiction mixed with romance, and you don’t care for the fact that what you actually came here for (“if” and “how” the child survives) will come at the very end, and… well, just because she has to mention it, then The Child Who Lived is the book for you. I didn’t feel like this was a story about a child at all, but rather about a problematic character.

In the postface A Letter From Ellie, Midwood explains how she wanted to talk about three specific topics: prostitution some women were forced into, children born in the camp, and the escape of Soviet inmates from Mauthausen. Again, kudos to her, but I think she got her hands too full: she got so lost talking about the first topic, she needed some easy explanation for the pregnancy, which didn’t come until so late in the book. If you want a proper text on the subject, she recommends Born Survivors by Wendy Holden.

Even the third topic is not talked about properly, but kinda skimmed. Adding some “girl power” for good measure would have been perfect for the main topics, but not in that way. The “brothel girls” had it as well, and far better represented than the protagonist’s.

**Thanks to NetGalley, Ellie Midwood, and Bookouture for an ARC of this book.**