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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
This was written by Mary Doria Russell, who wrote my favorite book of all time, but I really didn't like this one. Took me about 300 pages to care about any of the characters or be able to keep any of them straight, and by that time, it was too late to save the book for me.
no matter how dark teh tapestry God weaves for us, there's always a thread of grace.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
It's hard for me to write reviews of books I truly love. Books I hate? Easy. I just let my snark flag fly. I feel like Tolstoy's famous line from Anna Karenina ("Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way") applies. Great books are all alike and it's hard to say "I love this, you should read this, it was great" in creative ways. Whereas describing ranting about what makes a crappy book crappy is easy. What makes a great book? Characters that touch you, a plot that moves you, writing that enthralls you and a can't-put-down-and-can't-forget quality. And for me, this book has all of that.
This book is set in WWII Italy. Just from that, you know this story will break your heart. WWII/Holocaust books are easy to do poorly. Nazi is shorthand nowadays for "bad guy" and if you want to make it as simple as Nazis v. The Resistance/Jews/Allies, you can. But stories, like people, should never be that simplistic. And Russell succeeds partly because she makes everyone human. Which I think is all the better and all the scarier, because it wasn't monsters that committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was people. This book, along with [b:The Book Thief|19063|The Book Thief|Markus Zusak|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255579180s/19063.jpg|878368] are the two WWII novels I think everyone should read (though I could also make a case for [b:Number the Stars|47281|Number the Stars|Lois Lowry|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MYJn104PL._SL75_.jpg|2677305] because that book taught me everything I knew about the Holocaust in elementary school).
I do notice that Russell has a tendency to do her killing all at once. It's like she can't bear to part with her characters until the very end. Even though you know everyone will die (I mean, not everyone dies, but this is a Holocaust book. In circumstances like these, my mindset is that all the characters will die until proven otherwise). This happened in [b:The Sparrow|334176|The Sparrow|Mary Doria Russell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1230829367s/334176.jpg|3349153], too (not really a spoiler, you're told beforehand there's only one survivor of the mission). There are a couple of scattered deaths beforehand, but I was starting to wonder how everyone had survived when I hit the 3/4 mark and basically everyone was still alive. And then...they weren't.
My one complaint with this book was that I had trouble keeping track of all the characters (especially Renzo, who is generally very memorable but keeps changing his name!). There's a guide in front, but there's a lot of characters to keep track of.
Other than that, Russell, as always, creates a brilliant book. She can give more depth to a character in a paragraph than most people manage to do in an entire book (or in some authors' cases, entire series). She's not afraid of tackling the hard issues and approaches them with grace and feeling. She creates characters and scenes that feel so real you almost feel as if you lived through them.
This book is set in WWII Italy. Just from that, you know this story will break your heart. WWII/Holocaust books are easy to do poorly. Nazi is shorthand nowadays for "bad guy" and if you want to make it as simple as Nazis v. The Resistance/Jews/Allies, you can. But stories, like people, should never be that simplistic. And Russell succeeds partly because she makes everyone human. Which I think is all the better and all the scarier, because it wasn't monsters that committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was people. This book, along with [b:The Book Thief|19063|The Book Thief|Markus Zusak|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255579180s/19063.jpg|878368] are the two WWII novels I think everyone should read (though I could also make a case for [b:Number the Stars|47281|Number the Stars|Lois Lowry|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MYJn104PL._SL75_.jpg|2677305] because that book taught me everything I knew about the Holocaust in elementary school).
I do notice that Russell has a tendency to do her killing all at once. It's like she can't bear to part with her characters until the very end. Even though you know everyone will die (I mean, not everyone dies, but this is a Holocaust book. In circumstances like these, my mindset is that all the characters will die until proven otherwise). This happened in [b:The Sparrow|334176|The Sparrow|Mary Doria Russell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1230829367s/334176.jpg|3349153], too (not really a spoiler, you're told beforehand there's only one survivor of the mission). There are a couple of scattered deaths beforehand, but I was starting to wonder how everyone had survived when I hit the 3/4 mark and basically everyone was still alive. And then...they weren't.
My one complaint with this book was that I had trouble keeping track of all the characters (especially Renzo, who is generally very memorable but keeps changing his name!). There's a guide in front, but there's a lot of characters to keep track of.
Other than that, Russell, as always, creates a brilliant book. She can give more depth to a character in a paragraph than most people manage to do in an entire book (or in some authors' cases, entire series). She's not afraid of tackling the hard issues and approaches them with grace and feeling. She creates characters and scenes that feel so real you almost feel as if you lived through them.
I could not get into this book, and, actually only read it halfway through before I gave up. I felt like the story lines were all over the place, and I had a hard time concentrating on what was going on.
I have read a lot of WWII historical fiction, but not until A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell have I read one focused on Italy during WWII. And, I learned so much. 1. I didn't realize that Italy essentially waved the white flag long before the war was really over and then suffered the consequences of both the Allies and Nazi Germany trying to take control. 2. I didn't know that Jewish and Catholic faiths were so intermixed in Italian culture prior to the war that so many Jews were able to find protection in Italy. This story is character and storyline heavy, the title is in reference to a tapestry and that is exactly what this story is. I really enjoyed it, but I also found it difficult to keep track of everything at times. I think it would probably take about five readings to soak it all in. It had some really beautiful moments that I will treasure with regards to humanity and what happens when we choose love and understanding and that is this stories thread of grace.
A book about the Italian resistance and their struggle to hide Jews from the Nazis while keeping them from taking over their country. I struggled to finish this book, not because of the subject matter, but because the book had so many characters and so detailed oriented. It was interesting, but a slow read and hard for me to follow.
Very well-written, but too many characters for me to track. I think of it as "The Midnight's Children" effect. Giving it up halfway through.
Italy and Italian Jews surviving, adapting under facism and german occupation. Many believable characters. Italy was not France, is one giant lesson.