The Lenski File

Susannah D. Ketchum, a former teacher-librarian at the Bishop Strachan
School in Toronto, serves on the Southern Ontario Library Services
Board.

The dedication reads, “In memory of my grandmother who saved my life
and my sister whom I shall always seek.” Third in the On Time’s Wing
series, The Lenski File continues the fictionalized autobiography of
author Lillian Boraks-Nemetz.

The year is 1952. Slava (Boraks-Nemetz’s alter ego) has discovered a
file from which she learns that Basia, the younger sister whom she has
long believed to be dead, may have survived the Holocaust. With
ingenuity and a sizable portion of luck, Slava arranges to visit Poland,
where she finds a young girl called Teresa who might possibly be Basia.
The search has drawn the attention of the secret police, however, and
Slava is arrested and tortured. A former neighbor, who is also jailed,
dies.

The Lenski File, like its predecessors The Old Brown Suitcase (1994)
and The Sunflower Diary (1999), is told in the first person and
interspersed with flashbacks. It is fatally easy in the first person to
appear self-centred and, worse, self-pitying. In the earlier books, the
age of the narrator alleviated this tendency somewhat. In this latest
title, although Slava is “almost nineteen,” her voice is still
childish. Other characters are caricatures—Dorothea is “my
upper-class English friend,” and Tad, “the older man in my life,”
becomes “a stupid womanizer” and later “a paradoxical combination
of politician and poet.” Nevertheless, The Lenski File has flashes of
depth. The reader shares Slava’s pain when she realizes how unlikely
it is that she and Basia, who was only two when snatched from her
family, will recognize each other. Teresa’s bewilderment and sorrow as
she tries to recall her early years are equally poignant.

The Old Brown Suitcase won several awards, and The Sunflower Diary,
which was short listed for the Ontario Library Association’s 2000 Red
Maple Reading Award, was very popular with Grade 7 girls despite many of
the same flaws that mar The Lenski File. Undoubtedly readers already
familiar with the On Time’s Wing series will enjoy learning more of
Slava’s story. Recommended with reservations.