⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars!
“A river goes wherever the riverbank does. It never had to ask which way, but only flows along. Yes?”
In the same beautiful prose as, "The Book Thief", comes a story about a seven year old girl named Anna, whose father disappears one day. It's 1939, in Krakow Poland, and the Germans have invaded. To Anna's childlike confusion, she thinks her father will return, but when hours and days go by she is left to find a way to survive on her own. On a cobbled street outside a once beloved store to Anna, she is found crying, when a mysterious, strange and enormously tall person comes up to her. We know him only as the Swallow Man who gets Anna to stop crying by a small magic trick. He summons a swallow from the sky, which lands in his hand. Anna is completely mesmerized. Can this unusual stranger speak to birds? Not knowing any other way to survive, Anna puts her trust in this man who seems to of stepped out of a fairytale. He claims he will protect her and they head off into the wilderness together.
This story. Wow, this story! It is a breathtakingly beautiful look at the bond between fathers and daughters and just mankind in general. I loved seven year old Anna as the voice of this story. You could really tell her age in this narrative which was very important, but also that sometimes we don't give children enough credit when it comes to things they can handle and find ways to survive in the highest pressure stakes.
Overall though, I think it was the metaphors that made this book so special and one to treasure for years and years. The most prominent being the metaphor of flight. The idea of surrounding a WWII story around a type of bird, a delicate, small swallow was so genius and stunning. It's like the small bright light at the beginning of a new day, one that doesn't over power the book, but is enough of the story to make it magical and destined to become a classic. I love how the Swallow Man started out as this man of enchantment, but as the story progressed he became more and more human; with flaws and demons of his own.
“Men who try to understand the world without the help of children are like men who try to bake bread without the help of yeast.”
A truly wonderful book that is well deserved of its praise!
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