Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams - Shari Green - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Shari Green

GENRE: YA Novel-in-Verse

PUBLICATION DATE: March 5, 2024

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A YA novel-in-verse about a young girl’s wishful thoughts and experiences in socialist East Germany in the late 1980s. I don’t think it worked well as a novel-in-verse, but as a novel, it is amazing.

Plot Preview:

1989. Sixteen-year-old Helena has just one dream: to become a music conductor. Does she really have only one dream? No. But this is the only dream she can dare to speak about openly in a nation where everyone and everything is watched by the dreaded Stasi.

When some key people in her life take up greater roles in the protests against the government, Helena has to decide whether staying quiet is stifling the song of freedom.

The story comes to us in the first person perspective of Helena.

The Berlin Wall, which separated East Germany (GDR) & West Germany (FRG) in more ways than just physical, was metaphorically broken on 9th November 1989, when civilian protests caused the GDR government to allow their citizens freedom to visit West Berlin, and thereby, FRG. This story begins in August 1989, so through Helena’s narration, we are witness to the life of East German citizens in the final few months before this historical announcement.

Imagine the claustrophobia of being a prisoner in your own country while still not being imprisoned. Helena’s narration makes us see the greyness of life in GDR, where even common fruit such as oranges are nothing but unattainable dreams, where the citizens squash down their hunger for more with what spiel the government feeds them.

Imagine also the butterfly of hope fluttering in your heart when you hear that there is peaceful rebellion in the offing, that the citizens are planning to protest not with ammunition or violence but with prayer and candles. As a young adult who has been instructed all life long to keep dreams within limits, Helena infuses us too with her repressed yearning. She loves her country but wants it to be more, and we can see why.

Helena is just sixteen, but because of her constrained life in her socialist nation, her narration doesn’t suffer from the immaturity and self-absorption we typically see in YA fiction. She has her ambitions and hopes, but she also has her worries and heartbreaks. How she grows from an obedient girl who toes the line to someone who dares step beyond the societal and political limits is a journey worth watching. Through her budding feelings for Lucas, the book contains just the right dash of young love to the mix without making it sappy or sentimental.

Through Helena’s parents and her romantic interest Lucas, we also get to see three types of GDR citizens – the rule follower, the subtle protestor, and the open rebel. As Helena is close to all three of them, her struggle to decide on her course of action is understandable. I appreciate how the author didn’t make her journey smooth. Some of Helena’s decisions are questionable, but rather than viewing them with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight vision, it is imperative to ask: what would we do were we in her place?

There’s a sense of melancholy throughout the book even when Helena’s spirit is infused with dreams. An event mentioned in the author’s acknowledgements made me wonder if that situation subconsciously influenced the tone of the book. Nevertheless, the approach suits the story. There is something beautiful about the juxtaposition of pensiveness and hopefulness.

Helena’s passion for music isn’t just restricted to her aspiration of becoming a music conductor, but is used concretely in the narrative, whether through the act of venting emotions through music or passing on missives through music notations. Her fervour enhances through the story just as a musical tempo would – rising steadily until the crescendo at the end. As a music lover, I relished the role of music in this story.

Unlike most stories of protest, this tale doesn’t scream or yell. The song of freedom is a peaceful song, a harmonious voice that gains strength from the cohesive unity of the citizen protestors. So this book wouldn’t work for those who want something more vehement, more aggressive. It represents a melody sung from the heart, not from the mouth. And with an end that is more hope than happiness, the song ends on the right note.

As the story begins just a few months before the collapse of the GDR government, it is obvious that some familiarity with the history is presupposed. So if you feel like understanding Helena’s decisions better, you might want to read the author’s note first (it is at the end of the book and offers enough information without spoiling anything) or just look up the details of the Berlin Wall online. There’s also a glossary at the end for the German words and phrases.

The only negative of the book for me is that there is barely anything poetic about the writing style. Now, I need to clarify that this declaration is highly baseless, not just because I am not fond of poetry but also because I do not understand this kind of freewheeling poetry. To me, poems are all about rhyme and rhythm, and in this book, I saw neither of those. But as my knowledge about poetry is zilch, please feel free to ignore this paragraph. I read this book as I read every novel-in-verse: as a regular prose novel. I just ran through the sentences like I read normal text. Sacrilege, I agree. But it works for me much better than reading it as a poem would as my brain rebels against poetry.

All in all, this is a beautiful story of a girl who lives with fear but learns to hope. Though a YA book, it would suit anyone interested in a story set at such a momentous point of recent history. There are barely any YA works about this event, so I love that this book exists. It would also be a great novel for classroom discussions for the 15+ age group.

My thanks to Andrews McMeel Publishing and NetGalley for the DRC of “Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.