When I was a teen I LOVED learning more about the world wars from a more human perspective. Michael Morpurgo's writing really inspired me to find more stories like Private Peaceful and I think this interest in a human response to something that's so hard to imagine is something that's stuck with me since.
Austerlitz tells the story of Jacques Austerlitz, a boy who came to England on Kindertransport in 1939. As an adult, he wants to seek out his roots and begins a journey of trying to discover his birth family and where he came from. However, in post-war Europe, there are moments where this seems completely impossible: Jacques does not know the name he was born with, exactly where he came from or the names of any of his family members.
The story is a bleak one. Written in one long narrative with no chapter breaks throughout the book, the author really shows how relentless and exhausting this journey feels for Jacques. With twinges of memories interspersed with masses of sections of the unknown, Jacques really is facing something hard to quantify.
I found this a really difficult read. A lot of the book was wound up in Jacques travels and discussing the new landscapes that face him. I always find books with no chapter breaks very difficult to get really into and keep on top of exactly what's going on. It is a sad story of the kind of administrative nightmare that exists in a post World War Europe. There were lots of photographs in the text which helped to break it up a little, but these were printed so small in the kindle edition I read that it was hard to work out what exactly was going on in them.
I gave this 2 stars - whilst it did make me think abut the difficulties of growing up abroad during the war, I found it pretty tough going.
No comments:
Post a Comment