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Book Review of The Girl in the Red Coat

The Girl in the Red Coat
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This memoir about growing up Jewish in Poland during the war years and beyond is quite depressing. I kept wishing that things would pick up and improve especially after the war ended which was halfway through the book. But the author, a cousin of film director, Roman Polanski, was depressed through most of her life, marrying multiple times, and resorting to an addiction to pills. She had several successful careers as a painter, writer, and costume and stage set designer and married interesting men. It also seemed too bad that more historical research had not been provided about the political situations that her family found themselves in. It was a bit of a car wreck. I kept reading it because I was drawn to it but I wanted to look away.