Page Turners – January 2025 review

In January the Page Turners choice of book was ‘The Cut Out Girl‘ by Bart van Es. This book was published in 2018. It tells the true story of a young Dutch Jewish girl called Lien whose parents sent her to foster parents in order to save her life in the Second World War. The book tells of her various placements during the war and of one particular family who she stayed with afterwards. It is written by the grandson of that family who traces her story in order to discover why she fell out with his family much later in life. By that time Lien is willing to give her account and the author is able to hear it first-hand as well as use contemporary photographs and visit the locations.

It is important that such testimonies are recorded whilst we still have first-hand evidence and the book certainly gave us a point of view that we had not read elsewhere. Whilst the subject matter meant that it was difficult to say that we enjoyed this book, we mostly felt glad that we had read it. We enjoyed the engaging writing style which almost gave the book the feel of a novel rather than a non-fiction book. There were descriptive passages which enabled us to visualise the people and settings and the book shifted back and forth in time in order to relate the events of the past to the modern-day family.

Whilst this may not be described as a ‘page turner’ we still commend it to you. Please get in touch if you would like to read this book for yourself as we have copies we can share.

Deborah Wallis, Convenor