An American Mom in Asia

I picked Red Crosses by Belarusian author Sasha Filipenko for my Belarus pick. I had stopped and started a couple different books for this country, but finally settled on Red Crosses. It took awhile to get into the story, mainly because it’s told with 3 different narrators and the storyline is quite confusing.

We first meet a man moving into a new apartment, and he runs into his elderly neighbor, who is quite chatty. She talks and talks at him, and we find out that she has painted red crosses along the building to help her find her way home, because she’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The elderly neighbor then begins to tells stories of her life, during the war and working for the Red Cross. The book switches between these two storylines so frequently, I couldn’t tell which narrative I was reading. But eventually I figured it out, and the storyline was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end.

⭐️ My rating: 3 stars of 5