A review by uniskorn
Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory by Elizabeth Rosner

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

2.0

I think the subject matter is important, but the overall execution is frankly terrible. Rosner takes terrible events worldwide and meditates on them through the lens of being a daughter of Holocaust survivors and while I think this in essence should work, her reference to said atrocities usually are brief and incomplete when it comes to putting her full thoughts down or leaving the reader scratching their head. There are several parts in here that just don't flow with the overall narrative. She'll make an observation and as a reader, we're wondering why it's important or how it connects which I think cheapens what she's trying to do. There are some characterizations of her father too that had me scratching my head, like when she mentions his tooth falls out but then just moves on as if nothing has happened. 

I thought this would be a more thorough examination of epigenetics, or how our ancestors' genetics affect us particularly when they are subject to atrocities. I was interested to learn about that but instead of an interrogation of genetics and memory, it's more of a reflection piece which is fine but the marketing for why I purchased this book is ultimately misleading.