Ten Green Bottles

Ten Green Bottles by Vivian Jeanette Kaplan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is a really compelling story that needs to be told, but the telling of it was anything but compelling. Kaplan tells her mother's story in the first person, and does an admirable job of relating the extraordinary events of her life, one incident after another in a completely linear manner. Nini, (Kaplan's mother), manages to get out of Vienna with most of her family before the Nazis completely stop Jews from leaving. They go to Shanghai, the only country that will take them. But life in Shanghai is horrible and lawless, and the Japanese occupation forces are even more brutal than the Nazis. Amazingly, the family survives to make a better life in Canada. A better writer, or one who wasn't so emotionally tied to the protagonist, could have told this incredible story in a much more creative and interesting way and I suspect would have reached a larger audience.



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