My Long List of Impossible Things
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My Long List of Impossible Things
“If Ivan is here, that means the war is almost over, doesn’t it?” Hilde asked in a quiet voice.
“Almost over,” Mutti said. “And just beginning.”
A wave of unease rose inside me. I waited for her to tell us it was time to go back to the bedsheets. I was chilled, my sleeves still damp from the washing. The fire in the grate had gone cold.
The door burst open again. “Out,” said a soldier. He tapped the gold ladies’ watch on his arm and held up ten fingers. Then he left.
“What does he mean, out?” I said.
But Mutti was already on her way to the kitchen. “We have ten minutes. Take only what you can carry, and only the important things. Clothes, food. Nothing frivolous. Hurry.”
“But why are they making us leave?” I said.
“They have guns,” Mutti said. “They don’t need a reason.”
When the Soviet Army marches into eastern Germany in the last days of World War II, 16-year-old Katya, her mother and her older sister, Hilde, are forced to flee their home in Pomerania. They hope to find safety at the home of a distant friend in a far-off town, but the road is filled with desperate refugees and fraught with danger and violence. A sudden, horrifying act leaves the girls to make their difficult journey alone, and when they finally arrive in the (fictional) town of Fahlhoff, there are new challenges.
The town is under Soviet occupation, scarred by bombs and short of everything from cabbages to clothing. Katya, whose prodigious early talent on the piano was nurtured by her parents and by a gifted Jewish piano teacher, yearns for the joy of music, her dream of being a concert pianist shattered by the cruel reality of Soviet check-points and food line-ups. For now, Katya and her sister must survive, working on a farm to make themselves indispensable to Uncle Otto and Aunt Ilse so they will not be sent away.
Katya’s anger and resentment at the Soviets turns to confusion as, gradually, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her country. When a Soviet officer steals their meager food, she demands angrily, “What is wrong with you people?” He replies, “We treat the Germans the way they treated us. Fair is fair.” (p. 112). But Katya has been brought up to “look away” from truth, to ignore what causes pain, and she is convinced that German soldiers would never be a brutal as the Soviets.
Katya has little time to reflect or dream. Just getting enough to eat is a challenge, and she confines her music to her imagination. When she learns of a piano in a bombed-out building, she rushes to play it, and a crowd gathers to listen. “Sound carried, and music was like medicine. It worked for any ailment, especially a broken heart” (p. 228). Her playing also catches the attention of a young Soviet officer who goes to extraordinary lengths to win her favour. But Katya is still angry, and she commits an impulsive and rash act of sabotage that puts everyone in danger.
As in her first novel, The House of 1000 Eyes, author Michelle Barker uses the perspective of a teenaged girl to examine a harsh period of history. In that earlier book, Barker looked at life in East Germany under Communist rule. My Long List of Impossible Things explores the chaotic aftermath of Nazism and the horrors of war. Well-researched historical detail gives authenticity to the story and to the brutal realities of daily life in post-war East Germany.
Katya’s character is determinedly innocent, perhaps to a fault. She has been raised with her mother’s admonition, “‘Don’t speak out, don’t touch anything, make yourself invisible,’ …. Silence and invisibility had protected us for the past six years” (p. 19). Yet, at 16, Katya still believes her Jewish piano teacher moved to Poland by choice and that German soldiers were better behaved than Soviets. Her voice seems much younger, sometimes petulant and immature. Surrounded by anti-Semitism and fascist oppression, she ignores all the obvious signs of the horrors of Nazism. Katya’s obsessive focus on her piano enables her to shut out reality, but it is difficult to believe that, surrounded by death and cruelty, she would remain so naïve.
Some readers may become impatient with Katya’s reluctance to grow up, but otherwise the novel moves quickly, showing a personal perspective of history while it reveals the power of denial. If Katya refuses to see the oppression by her own country, she will not have to believe it and life can go on. Injustice and cruelty are perpetuated, not just in Nazi Germany, but in societies around the world. When circumstances prove to Katya that humans are capable of good and evil no matter what their nationality, she is forced to confront the complexity of the world.
My Long List of Impossible Things challenges young readers to see a well-documented period of history through new eyes and to recognize that turmoil does not end when the guns of war are silenced.
Wendy Phillips is a former teacher-librarian and the author two young adult novels in verse, Fishtailing and Baggage.