Publisher: John Murray
This was sent to me by the people of John Murray. I anticipated it to be a pretty interesting read about Poland in the war. I'd thoroughly enjoyed The Pianist so though this would be another perspective! I was wrong.
On my twitter feed I've been somewhat brutal about this book. However, I would like to clarify that this would probably be a thoroughly enjoyable read for the right person. This is not a book for me, that is why I haven't particularly enjoyed it. Obviously Seaward has done her research on Poland and WW2 and it is well written so well done to her.
To start off with, the first chapter is pretty brutal and violent, the book does not continue like this. There is far too much horse business for my liking, that is mainly because horses scare the absolute shit out of me!
I didn't really feel the tone of the book, it was all too cliched, a woman trying to find out more about herself through her family's past. All that rubbish...defo not my type of read. It made the war too romantic. It romanticised the struggle and plight of the Polish people and that annoyed me. It was brutal, it was hard, it was deadly!
The flowery language got on my nerves a lot, made the book seem in the modern day passages very chick litty. The tenses were rather odd, I had no idea as to if I was coming or going most of the time. It angered me. Also, I'm interested to find out if Seaward is a native English speaker as the sentence structures were most peculiar on occasion and reminded me of how Italian articles are when they come in to me before editing.
The story runs in alternate chapters between Krystyna in the war and Catherine now. The chapters set in the war make the modern day ones so trivial and ridiculous that it is pretty annoying to come across them. I wasn't particularly bothered to read about Catherine and her life and her searching and all that rubbish! I would have preferred it if the novel stuck with a Janek throughout. The first chapter was so promising in that respect, oh so very promising!
Right, anyway, as I've said, I'm sure the right person would thoroughly enjoy this book but sadly it wasn't one for me!
Happy Reading
Book Geek
:-)
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