The View from 58-inches High

This book was better than I expected and I ended up finishing it in about 3-days. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a fictional Holocaust story, it seemed like an odd subject to write a fictional story about. What I loved about this book is that it addressed a horrific historical event with fictional characters and kept you interested in the characters themselves. I find the tendency is to try to bludgeon the reader with the horrific details of the events making the characters secondary and removed. The holocaust story is told through the eyes of the little girl and it’s only through the reader’s connection to her, and her innocence, that the horror is perceived. Rather than bombarding the reader with horrifying events, she allows you to imagine based on history we all know.

I was also surprised that the holocaust story only lasted through half the book. The rest of the book is spent investigating the aftermath of this girl’s story. Again, this was an interesting, and unique, take on the impact of the holocaust. It turns the spotlight on those who turned their heads and ignored what they knew has happening. I found myself gripped by the guilt that remained for generations.

Now, the book is by no means perfect. There quite a few conveniences that were difficult to believe. I also never understood the purpose of Julia’s relationship with her husband. I kept expecting some catharsis that never came. After finishing the book, I still feel this entire storyline was a distraction.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was a quick read that I will not pick up again. I recommend it as a half-price books buy.

I gave this book three-stars. I don’t really know where to start with this book. If I had to sum this up in one word it would be overwhelming. I get the feeling that the author didn’t quite know who the audience for this book would be. The relationships and story lines are fairly complex and yet the author feels the need to constantly “sum up” the events of the previous chapters as if we were continuing from last weeks episode. The writing describing the characters motives were also very brute force, assuming the reader was too stupid to understand the characters well enough to understand the motives.

Second, there are so many stories, they are all good on their own or paired with one other, but all of these stories combined added to the weightiness of the book.  All of these characters are connected by loosely sown threads that are too coincidental to be believed. Tom finding Ellen who’s husband had a connection to the priory where Philip ends up. Philip saves Tom, Allen and Aliena. Aliena was engaged to the William who fired Tom and was given the title of Earl by a king put in place by a piece of information passed from Philip. With all that, I have not given a way anything about this book. There are ten more relationships within those. I suppose it could be argued that the upper class was a very tight nit community but that hardly explains the relationships to a mason and an outlaw. Furthermore, there is far too much happenstance.  Like when Philip just happened to be right next to Aliena at the market and that Aliena ends up in the same town as Jack which happens to be the same town the baby, born miles away, ends up at.

Finally, my biggest gripe with this book is that it was about 300 pages too long. I would have liked less plot twists and more subtlety. My favorite parts of this book were spent making rounding out the characters; such as Jacks storytelling and Tom’s love of cathedral architecture. There was not enough time spent on the emotional aspects of the characters and far too much time spent on their actions. There are three characters in the book that do nothing by “take revenge” on the “good” characters. The only motive seeming to be pride? These characters were hell bent on revenge even when revenge would benefit them in no way. By the end it felt like Wiley-coyote going after the road-runner again. Come on, the road-runner always wins!

Resentment burned in his stomach as he regarded Aliena’s prosperous, dignified, happy family. Everything they had should have been his. But he had not given up the hope of revenge.

Seriously, this would have been revenge number eight or nine. He’s in his 50’s at this point!

This book was chosen by our book club. I was excited because I was expecting something very light and easy to read. This book disappointed in a good way. While the book does center on a zombie plague, the real story is the reaction to the plague. The “crisis” could have been anything and 90% of the book would have held true. The book was smart, thought-provoking, and emotional. It was not at all what I expected.

The first thing that caught my attention is that the whole book is written like a post-apocalyptic documentary. Every chapter is an interview with a short introduction of the interviewee; just like you would read in a magazine. Normally this would be distracting as the reader is not able to connect with any one character. Instead, it adds world-wide prospective and the short nature of the narratives emphasizes the scale and speed of the epidemic. The narratives flow chronologically and often reference people from other interviews.

The book makes you question how a crisis like this would be handled by the world. The use of zombies is actually genius in this way.  There is hardly a crisis out there that doesn’t have some political slant to it. The use of zombies as opens the reader to consider the questions, posed so subtly, without bias.

I’m not sure how Max Brooks managed to cram so many social issues into one book without it feeling overwhelming in the slightest. Through the interviews, he is able to expose the events and the choices that led up to those events. Often, he offers multiple view points on the same issue. Many of the stories are from within the organization which made the decision then from the outside observer. These are not always successive, which further adds to the depth of the overall story.  There are the large-scale themes of freedom of information, human selection, and rebuilding civilizations. Woven within these larger issues are painful stories of survival and loss. These were the most gripping.

“I looked behind us and thought I could just make her out, this little spec getting smaller each second. I thought she looked like she was running after us, but I was so tired and confused I couldn’t be sure. I probably just didn’t want to know.”

“We should have known way before he dropped out of formation, before we heard the shot. He was sitting in the living room, in this worn, old easy chair, SIR between his knees, that smile still on this face. I looked up at the pictures on the mantelpiece. It was his home.”

I spent many nights questioning what choices I would make if the time came. This is not an easy read in that it will stay with you well after you are done reading it. Even the end of the book is very open ended. I will read this book again.