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I have checked this out from the library. Just need to force myself to finish my current book of essays by an insufferable idiot first before starting this. Looking forward to it as I only read Slaughterhouse Five, and that a long time ago.
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Jan 7, 2017 21:47
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I am about a quarter of the way through it, and I'm loving it. It's amazing how he can blend humour with really serious and profound passages. I loved the part where he talks about numbness and trauma, and how after awhile a job is just a job - particularly the part with the Polish guard describing how putting a belt around a hated Nazi to hang him and putting a belt around his suitcase later felt exactly the same, just another job.
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Jan 12, 2017 21:08
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I finished the book. It really is hard to put it down when you are reading it. The chapters are short, but I would always just read the first sentence of the next chapter and then be unable to stop because it was so interesting.Franchescanado posted:You made me consider that Howard's freedom would be the same as his inprisonment and his spy work, at the behest of "Frank", essentially making him a puppet even in freedom. He'd be free on someone else's terms. By killing himself, he would finally be taking action over his fate. He won't be free, or alive, but he'd have control on his own terms, which is a lot: he's broken, bereft of emotions and a will to live, he spends the novel going through motions, but finally he has made a decision, a big decision, which no one can take away or be reversed, and he's doing it with confidence, and even finds humor in it. There are those couple of scenes in the book where he finds himself unable to move without someone telling him what to do. The doctor's mother sees in him what she saw in the people at Auschwitz who would be unable to move and were just desperate for someone to tell them to do something. By begging the doctor to call someone so he can stand trial for his crimes, he's finally making some kind of choice. I think you're right that Frank is offering him a return to the prison in which he spent so much of his life, of passively letting others decide his fate. In his final meeting with Frank, Howard asks who knows who he really is, and Frank comments that the three people who know the truth about him know exactly who he is, that he can't separate the "good" Howard from the Nazi propaganda Howard.
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Jan 21, 2017 23:42
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I really liked Purple Hibiscus. She's a great author. Half of a Yellow Sun is highly regarded and has also been on my shelf for two years, so that's my selfish recommendation.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:03
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