It is Fink's special art to show that even the Holocaust had its everyday life, where death and daily routine shared the same cramped spaces. In crisp and concrete prose Fink describes the excruciating wait for the unknown as a young couple, hidden in a tiny attic, stave off insanity day after day by watching the hens outside through a chink in the wall.

She records the many modest acts of courage, re-creates the subtle shifts in consciousness, and conjures up the smells of the forest and the bitter taste of roots and raw potatoes.

With delicate restraint, she shows us the survivors' desperate search for traces or clues: a torn piece of paper, a half-forgotten address, initials carved into a windowsill, any mention, any at all, of a loved one. And she charts the passage of time that insidiously transforms experience into anecdote: we see Weiskranz, a baker murdered in one of the camps, condemned to constant resurrection and death with every telling of his tale.

As story builds on vivid story, we understand the true poignancy of the storyteller, who can remember and recount, but not revive, people and places now gone forever.