Helpful Score: 1
Well, I DID make it through the 975 pages, and I'll be honest, it wasn't always easy. Let me start by saying, it's truly a work of art; I can't conceive of how ones is able to write such a book. Not only is there an insane amount of research required, but to write in this style is amazing. That's not to say I enjoyed the book... the subject matter is difficult and there were times that the stream of conscious style of writing, especially for a person whose mental status is in question for much of the book, was a chore to wade through and process. This book was a best seller in France, yet I just can't imagine THAT many people reading it.
Helpful Score: 1
A historical novel of WWII told from a Nazi officer's perspective that presents a very meticulous accounting of the war, but also presents an increasing serene and flippant recounting of the horrors that are occurring around him. At times he muses that he is becoming inured and needs to try to regain the initial shock he felt when first hearing & seeing the atrocities occurring. He tries to justifies his actions and those of his fellow officers in the first chapter by saying: "I am a man like other men. I am a man like you. I tell you I am just like you!" And indeed, that may be the crux used to describe mankind's inhumanity throughout the ages.
Overall, I felt like I was being drug through some kind of surreal hell trying to read this book. It became increasingly overwhelming for me and I finally laid it aside without finishing it.
Overall, I felt like I was being drug through some kind of surreal hell trying to read this book. It became increasingly overwhelming for me and I finally laid it aside without finishing it.
I received my copy with a note saying "great, disturbing, strange book" and I must agree that The Kindly Ones is all of the above. At over 900 pages, it's an epic fictional memoir of WWII from the perspective of Maximilien Aue, a young doctor of law who becomes a SS officer that slips away to become a lace manufacturer in France. If you like your books to be tightly edited, you most likely won't enjoy this book: it's full of long paragraphs, long chapters, and lots of details of Aue's professional life. The chart on SS ranks in the back is an invaluable guide. The parts that focus on his private life border on fantastical. Note it also won an award for literary bad sex. However, American-born Littell's telling the story of the war from a thinking Nazi's perspective can be a mesmerizing military adventure and a morally challenging mirror held up to the reader. I'm glad the list of 1001 books you must read before you die led me to Les Bienveillantes, originally in French, whose title refers to the Furies of Greek mythology.
Only made it through the first 21 pages of this 982 page tome. It is a stream of consciousness rendering of the thoughts of a former Nazi officer who has reinvented himself into a middle-class factory owner in France. Why the author chose to make the main character gay is beyond me. This is supposedly an international best seller that was originally published in French under the title "Les Bienvieillantes". Good luck to you readers brave enough to slog through this one.
