The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff

Amy    

historical fiction

The Orphan’s Tale was a heartwarming and heartbreaking story about how two women survived WWII.  Noa and Astrid came from different backgrounds and faced different challenges but came together by chance at a German traveling circus, each with their own secrets.  Together, they spent several months during which they came to respect and care for one another despite the tense and dangerous situation in which they found themselves.  As the title indicated, it was a story about orphans yet it was not about only one orphan as the title implied.  So many people have lost parents during wars and WWII was particularly guilty of separating families.

The characters in this novel were well-drawn and easy to imagine and love.  The descriptions were clear, although the trapeze education was a bit too long-winded.  I’ve enjoyed reading about circus performers in previous novels and this one too.  It’s a rich topic of unusual people and circumstances. Learning of good people sheltering Jews during WWII is also intriguing.  Pam Jenoff used the two women’s points of view effectively but, if I had been editing, I would have recommended that she needn’t use as much overlap as she did.  I enjoyed the few unexpected surprises in the story.

As a letterboxer, I was intrigued by the idea of belly boxes (not sure about the spelling since I listened to the audiobook) underneath the train. I tried to find out more about them on Google but came up empty. I wonder if Jenoff invented this concept?

The audiobook narrators were very good using several accents and with terrific voice acting.  My complaints are mostly with the general audiobook directing or, perhaps, with the narrator choices.  One woman is supposed to be Dutch and the other is German. However, the woman performing as the German (I believe this was Jennifer Wydra) spoke with an American accent when doing straight narration but would switch to German when her character was speaking and other accents as necessary during dialogues.  Why would she fall back to American? To me, if she was going to voice the German woman with a German accent when she spoke, she should have used the accent throughout the narration.  The other voice actor (Kyla Garcia) spoke with a vague European accent all of the time, switching to other accents for various characters as necessary.  This made the American voice seem even more inappropriate.  The inconsistency between the two bugged me. There was also one chapter in the middle where Jennifer Wydra sounded so different for her character that I wondered if another narrator had stepped in for some reason.  So, while the voice acting overall was good for the novel, these issues were distracting so I give Jennifer Wydra a B+ and Kyla Garcia an A.