The Thing We Cannot Say is a love story. The love between Alina Dziak and Tomasz Slaski, however, is not just love but rather love as it might be, as it should be, an elevated kind of powerful and resilient love that binds two hearts across more than 70 years of separation. In the opening pages, the love between the two Polish teenagers (Alina is only 15) seems like the stuff of fairy tales, a love that is immediately self-evident, unquestioned, and certain to collapse under its own irony. Their tender kisses are perfect moments of suspended animation. Alina gushes, “I was astounded by the love I felt for Tomasz, and that I could see that same desperate love mirrored in his eyes felt like a miracle” (25).

That naïve and tender love, however, is tested by harrowing circumstances as the fairy tale morphs into the horrors of the Nazi occupation. That love sustains Alina through the longing and loneliness of separation, and just thinking about their love infuses even the bleakest moments with warm consolation. That love only grows stronger when they are apart. “Our love,” Tomasz assures her, “is bigger than this war” (299).