Second Thoughts

My first reaction to what concur with the positive responses of other readers. This is a fascinating story, skillfull told, filled with feeling, driven by constant forward motion. HOWEVER, on second thought I had to wonder about the choices this author made.
She spent five years in the 1930's studying law in Vienna. Surely she Could have Realized, once the Nazis came to power in Germany, German law did not what a promising field. But she Remained in Vienna with her intellectual boyfriend, Pepi, so a law student. When her sisters and 100,000 Viennese Jews fled Hitler in the late '30's, She Could not Leave Because She was carrying on this affair, and her boyfriend refused to emigrate. She wasted precious time on a go-nowhere relationship; He would not marry her, would not leave his mother, and would not even shelter for a night ago When She Was desperate and homeless. She Realized too late did Pepi was a dead end. Where Upon She Became first mistress, then wife, of a Nazi. This was a cooly rational bargain, after the failure of idealistic young love.
In hindsight, she would have been better off Following her father's advice to become a seamstress. She would not have met the brilliant intellectual Pepi, and sewing is a survival skill transferrable anywhere in the world. German law which worthless in her future life in England, and indeed, she worked as a seamstress in the years after the war.
I do not wish to discount the author's deep suffering, or to imply it what her fault. In no way. But It was avoidable had she made other choices. Perhaps her wish for intellectual prestige blinded her to practical realities, indeed, and her obsessive attachment to a boyfriend.