This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.
( )

This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.
( )

This book is difficult for me to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The book uses a contemporary setting, event and time as a vehicle for actually telling a story about the Holocaust, and herein lies the first problem. The characters and situations portrayed in the contemporary setting lack authenticity. As characters, they are not credible. The development of their characters is too shallow, too incomplete to really know much about them. When the author attempts to make it seem as if he intended for that to be the case by explaining their behaviors in the last chapters of the book, his explanation is again too superficial for credibility.
While Diane’s character is dealt with in the final chapters, the character of Brad, the schmuck who tolerated her for years, is not amplified. He has put up with too much to be a realistic character, even IF there were a reasonable explanation for Diane’s behavior.
The scenes in the Nazi Death Camps are vivid, detailed, lengthy nod overwrought. While at first, they generate the kind of revulsion in the reader that the author intended, they drag on for so long that empathy and sympathy are difficult to maintain, and I found myself thinking, “OK. I get it. Move on.”
In creating these situations, however, the author has also developed moral tension, something found in far too few modern novels.
Both of the two main characters are forced to make moral choices, one much worse and more fundamental than the other. The novel portrays them each wrestling briefly with their moral decisions before making them. Since the real central theme of the book deals with moral dilemma and difficult choices, there should have been more attention paid to the struggles the consciences of the two characters had. They each resolve their moral challenge too quickly and with far too little moral introspection.
While the ending of the novel deals with what each did to face his lifelong
moral turmoil and the consequences of the moral choices each had made while in the death camps, even in that portrayal, the struggles lacked depth and failed to elicit poignancy.
William Faulkner, when accepting his Nobel Prize, said, “Good literature portrays the human heart in conflict with itself,” which is really an excellent description of what “moral conflict” means. This book had an opportunity to delve into that conflict but chose instead to only give us only a snapshot of it.
( )

The story is about two boys – friends almost from birth in 1923 – who grow up in Ukraine. One of the boys (Asher) is Jewish and the other Ukrainian, and they are inseparable. When Asher’s parents decide they must move to Warsaw, both boys are devastated. They meet again, years later, but in a very different world.

Kingfisher’s sparse writing style while almost apropos for the subject matter will leave many readers feeling cheated somehow. He has golden opportunities to reel his readers into this historical story, but lets the opportunities pass him by. Even his descriptions of the two boys leaves readers wanting more about each of them in order to more easily relate to them. When Asher reaches Warsaw, another opportunity is lost because Kingfisher fails to adequately describe not only the city but the events leading up to the destruction of the Jewish Ghetto. And then there is Treblinka concentration camp.... The old writers’ adage “show, don’t tell” should have been used to better advantage by Kingfisher.

If you love historical fiction, you might enjoy this book or if you know nothing about the events in the Ukraine or Poland during WWII, you might enjoy learning something about this period and place in history. But if you are looking for a well-written book with well-developed characters and learning about a unique setting, this may not be the book for you. ( )