Save Me Twice
This is not a book I'd typically pick up. Having picked it up, it's not the sort of book I'd typically stick with to the end. But a coworker wrote it. She gifted it to me after I read All the Light We Cannot See and The Book Thief in quick succession because she assumed I was interested in WWII literature. And it's not that I'm not, but there's only so much you can read about any one topic and about WWII in particular. So going in to this, I was not particularly excited to be reading about a German soldier and his time in an American POW camp.
The thing is, the story ended up being pretty interesting. There was a grace and elegance to it that was fighting to get out. But it was fighting hard through rough and stilted language. As a rough draft, it's pretty good. As a published novel, well, this is the problem with self-publishing. The book is in desperate need of an editor.
The problem is two-fold. English is not the author's native language. There were several instances of poor word choice (award instead of reward, extinguish in place of distinguish) that an editor would have caught. And fiction is not the author's native voice. She's written a lot of non-fiction: proposals, technical papers, patents, and even a text book. But fiction requires more finesse, more breathing room.
The story was rushed. She was in such a hurry to tell it, to get to the good stuff, that she never let the small moments speak for themselves. There was a lot of telling and very little showing. A lot of technical accuracy and very little real emotion.
There is an interesting book in here, a story worth hearing. But it's not worth fighting through the language. A person can only read so many WWII novels in one lifetime, and it's not worth taking up space with this one.
The thing is, the story ended up being pretty interesting. There was a grace and elegance to it that was fighting to get out. But it was fighting hard through rough and stilted language. As a rough draft, it's pretty good. As a published novel, well, this is the problem with self-publishing. The book is in desperate need of an editor.
The problem is two-fold. English is not the author's native language. There were several instances of poor word choice (award instead of reward, extinguish in place of distinguish) that an editor would have caught. And fiction is not the author's native voice. She's written a lot of non-fiction: proposals, technical papers, patents, and even a text book. But fiction requires more finesse, more breathing room.
The story was rushed. She was in such a hurry to tell it, to get to the good stuff, that she never let the small moments speak for themselves. There was a lot of telling and very little showing. A lot of technical accuracy and very little real emotion.
There is an interesting book in here, a story worth hearing. But it's not worth fighting through the language. A person can only read so many WWII novels in one lifetime, and it's not worth taking up space with this one.
Comments
Post a Comment