Between Shades of Grey is a 2011 Young Adult Historical Fiction book and the debut novel of Ruta Sepetys.
It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother and the journey they take to a labor-camp in Siberia.
The book is heavily based on stories that Ms. Sepetys heard from survivors of the Baltic Genocide while visiting relatives in Siberia. It is related to and set in the same universe as her other novel, Salt To The Sea.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Nikolai's father and stepmother are implied to be this. His father seems to not care about him, and his stepmother hates him simply for being half Polish.
- Anger Born of Worry: Lina's father when he finds out she drew mocking pictures of Stalin showing her father and his friends throwing paper airplanes at Stalin in a clown suit. Given that this is Soviet Russia in the 1940s, Lina would've endangered herself heavily.
- Animal Motifs: The commander is compared to a snake when Lina is drawing him.
- Ambiguous Ending: We never truly learn what happens to Lina's father, although he likely dies in prison or before he ever gets there.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Elena seems kind and sweet, but when Ulushka tries to throw Lina out into the snow and drags her by her hair, Elena doesn't hesitate to slap her. When her son is being dragged away from her, she uses her knowledge of the Russian language along with her quick wit to save him.
- Bittersweet Ending: In the end, Lina and Andrius survive and end up together, but they are scarred and shocked by their experiences and have lost years of their lives in a living hell, while many of the people they cared about did not make it, including Lina's own mother. Not to mention that Lithuania will remain under Soviet control for decades to come. Along with that, Lithuanians are forced to live in certain areas and banned from getting a higher education, while many of the labor camps survivors' homes have been taken by the Russians.
- Foil: Elena and Mr. Stalas. While Elena is hopeful, understanding and kind, Mr. Stalas is cynical, standoffish, and says whatever is on his mind, no matter how foul.
- Foreshadowing: The commander yelling at Kretsky. While it's dismissed in the book, later it's revealed that Nikolai's maternal relatives are in a camp in Kolyma, and he was stationed to go there. He wanted to help them, however, he is not allowed to since he had helped Lina's mother.
- Good All Along: Kretsky. While he laughs and spits in Lina's face and seems to be just as terrible as all the other NKVD officers, he is actually not. When the women were forced to stand naked and gawked at, he turned his back. When Elena is getting sexually harassed, he tells the others the stop and even drives her back. He also lets Lina steal wood at the end.
- Happily Married: Elena and Kostas
- Hellhole Prison: The second camp in particular, which is essentially a barren Arctic wasteland crossed with a forced labor camp.
- Historical Fiction: Set during the Baltic Genocide of WWII.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Janina's mother after she realizes she has just tried to choke her own daughter.
- No Periods, Period: Averted. Lina stops menstruating due to losing too much body fat in the labor camp. It is never stated whether her periods return or when- though it is not mentioned that she and Andrius had children in the future.
- Kick the Dog: Ivanov. He constantly laughs at the prisoners' misery, and despite them laboring and getting very little food in exchange, he calls them lazy and ungrateful pigs. Even worse when he laughs at Lina after she lost her mother and when he finds out several people died after getting trapped in a hut and frozen to death.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Nikolai Kretsky. He's an NKVD agent, but while most of them are sadistic and cruel to the captives, he struggles with the immorality what he does and does help them somewhat.
- Time Capsule: Lina creates one as a record of her experiences, since she cannot discuss them. The book ends with it being found by a construction crew.
- The Cynic: Mr. Stalas. He's constantly telling the others that they're better off killing themselves, shows almost no kindness and thinks a lot of the more hopeful characters are foolish. He often crosses the line with his comments, to the point that Andrius even says that he'd "make the Soviets look kind". Given what we've seen of the Soviets, he really crossed the line to make Andrius that mad.
- The Reveal: The reason Lina's family is in a labor camp is that her family helped her uncle's family escape out of Lithuania to avoid the NKVD. Unfortunately, Joana's escape meant Lina's imprisonment.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lina accusing Andrius' mother of cooperating with the Russians after seeing her in their cabin.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Most of the kids and adolescents in the book. Lina was a regular teenage girl who liked hanging out with her cousin and crushing on boys, but due to her situation, she must keep her family alive and have enough perseverance to hope one day she's going to return to her homeland.
