Bart van Es: The Cut out Girl – A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found, 9780241978726, paperback, Penguin, Non-fiction, Costa Book of the Year 2018

German edition: Das Mädchen mit dem Poesiealbum, Dumont Verlag, gebunden & E-Books

When the prestigious „Costa Book of  the Year 2018“ was awarded this year,  I learned through an Instagram posting of the publisher at Penguin whose publishing I highly value that it had gone to  Bart van Es’ „The Cut out Girl“ .

This is one of these books you keep thinking about long after you finished reading, a deeply touching combination of history book and family memoir. How very brave of Bart to investigate a family secret and how courageous of Lien to open her heart and grant him access to her life story.  I knew some historical facts about the fate of Jews in Holland during Nazi occupation but Lien’s memoir provides a much deeper insight. I had absolutely no idea so many Jews went into hiding in the Netherlands, most of them were unfortunately betrayed and sent to their death. 

Lien’s parents decide to give her away to Dutch foster parents in 1940 hoping that she would survive the war in hiding. Bart van Es’s socialist grandparents were her foster parents, Lien soon learns to trust and love them and becomes close to her foster siblings. During a Nazi raid she can barely escape with the help of an underground network who move her around until she is finally placed with a Calvinist family in the Dutch countryside for the duration of the war.  Learning of her own parent’s death in a concentration camp after the war is over; the van Es’ family takes her in again and eventually adopts her.  So why it is that after returning to the family she loved Lien’s name has almost disappeared from being mentioned in the van Es family?  Bart’s curiosity as an Oxford scholar leads him to a painstaking research of Lien’s life evolving into a deep friendship and understanding between them.

Bart van Es's writing weaves back and force between his conversations with Lien, his own investigation visiting the places where Lien lived during the war narrating her life as a child, both their joint family history and finally her adult life and relationships. 

I still think of the trauma Lien experienced, the painful incidents which lead to several dramatic misunderstandings, the hurt and loss finally affecting her adult life. But this is also the story of many people's kindness, love and courageous efforts that went into saving Lien.  This book went under my skin and has a happy ending.