Book Review: BEELITZ-HEILSTÄTTEN: Where Ghosts Never Die
BEELITZ-HEILSTÄTTEN: Where Ghosts Never Die by Marina OsipovaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a huge departure from my usual reading choices, so my review comes from that standpoint. I don’t read horror novels, because I have the sort of imagination that causes my emotional and physical reactions to treat a story as if it were reality. I can logically know that something isn’t really happening, but I’ll still get knocked for a loop.
However. I love ruined buildings, especially when they have a unique history and stories to tell. Beelitz-Heilstatten has that, in droves. Our protagonist visits this abandoned hospital complex to fulfill a personal need to see the place where she was born. She hoped for some closure, but what she got was a chance to go back and experience the history of the hospital, during that dark point in history when the Nazis were conducting horrific experiments on human beings. It’s an unusual time travel story that at times feels dreamlike, and at other times feels all too real. It’s real enough to her to cause her to fall in love with one of the doctors from the past – and develop an aversion to a young man who would become one of the most infamous people in all of history.
It can be a difficult book to read due to the subject matter. But the story is compelling, and it’s written beautifully, in phrases and wording that captures the mood of this very personal, surreal experience. Ultimately, I’m glad I read it. But I’ll admit I plunged into a gentler, comfort book shortly afterwards.
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Lori Alden Holuta
Lori Alden Holuta lives between the cornfields of Mid-Michigan, where she grows vegetables and herbs when she’s not writing, editing, or playing games with a cat named Chives.
