Wednesday, September 25, 2013
The book I am reading now, Winter of the Word, is the second book in the Century trilogy by Ken Foullet. It took me about a year to finish the first book, which was about 1,000 pages, but I took breaks and read different books at the same time. The first book is called Fall of Giants and takes place before, during, and after World War 1. The book follows different families from Russia, England, Whales, Germany, Austria, and the United States. Each character is connected to each one of the others in some way. The book I am reading now follows the children of each of the characters from the first book. It is interesting to see how each family ends up in different places in the book, the father of one of the main characters was born and raised in Russia, but moves to Buffalo, New York as soon as he could, and becomes a gangster who sells illegal liquor during Prohibition. His daughter takes a vacation to England and marries the son of an Earl, and then spends the rest of the book living in England (at least as far as I have read so far). Ken Foullet´s style of writing is mainly informative. He doesn't try as hard to put in sensory details that would make the book as descriptive as it could be. However he does do an amazing job of telling the story through different eyes of different characters, since the book is written in first person of about 8 or so characters. I just finished a passage last night through Erik's eyes. Erik is a young German who is blindingly faithful to the Nazis even though his father was killed by the gestapo (German police). He is extremely stubborn and naive, as shown in the passage I read last night. Erik works on the front line about 40 miles west of Moscow as a medical assistant. He was called to treat the victims of a car crash near the woods. When every person has been treated, he hears gun shots and decides to investigate. He sees the Russian people of the town they had just occupied stand in a line leading to the SS officers, who were greatly admired by Erik. Eventually he comes upon a pit where the 12 gunmen shot and kill the towns people one by one because they were all Jews or communists according to the SS officers. Erik had never believed the Nazis were murderers, he didnt even believe his father was killed by the gestapo. The way Foullet describes this scene is beautiful. As the reader I can clearly see the innocence and naivety of Erik in this scene. This book is really interesting and an amazing page turner. I recommend it for any one!
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This book sounds like something I would read. I like how you explained the structure of the book. I am though confused on who Earl is? Is he a character from the first book? How are the people connected? Do they meet each other through out the book? Or are they near each other around the same time but never meet? You said that its more informative book rather then being descriptive, but when your reading someone point of view do you get a descriptive scene of whats going on in their head? This book seems like a book I will definitely have to pick up and read. I would love to learn more about other characters in the book and more of what is going on.
ReplyDeleteI was curious about the comment you made about description, too, which you seemed to contradict in the last part of your post when you discuss Erik's witnessing the SS murdering the townspeople. How can you see what he sees if it isn't descriptive. Can you unpack that a little more in your next post?
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