This is a hard book to rate as some parts are excellent and I couldn't put it down in several places. Other parts, less gripping. It's really three stories in one book: Sage, a shy baker with a scarred face from a car accident who is dealing with insecurity issues and the loss of her parents and who befriends old Josef, who just wants to die; her grandmother Minka, a holocaust survivor; and the fictional Anya who befriends a vampire-like creature in the book Minka has been writing since childhood. The book switches between the three stories, eventually bringing them together at the end.

Minka's story is by far the most gripping and heart-wrenching (well of course, she was in Auschwitz, and it's she who is the titular storyteller). The vampire story acts as an allegory for various real life people who see themselves in it. And Sage spends a lot of time dwelling in her disfigured, unloveable hideousness and baking bread. When Josef asks for her help to die it seems as if the book is going to deal with some pretty serious issues about repentance, forgiveness, confession, and atonement. But the end felt forced to me, characters started doing things without explanation, loose ends failed to tie up, and the whole finale felt abrupt and unresolved. It really felt as if the author got 4/5 through writing the book and then the publisher said it had to be completed RIGHT NOW and she was forced to wrap everything up in 2 chapters.