I'm going to be completely transparent. I did not finish this book. I didn't even get halfway.
After her father's death, the author is given his diary. She then tries to retrace his early life to connect with his past.
In the description, it states, "his daughter happens upon an old diary written in a foreign language. As she works to interpret it, the truth of her father's incredible story finally begins to come to light, after years of being shrouded in secrecy." To me, that meant she was translating the diary. In fact, the diary is more a list of dates with places or a sentence or two.
From what I read, the book is more about the author and her journey of discovery. There is nothing wrong with that - it's just not what I expected. The main thing that irritated me was the speculation and questions. "I imagine such and such happening" was common. So were the impossible questions. And it wasn't just one. They were in groups of 3 or 4. For instance, the author goes through a series of questions about a relative. Was she pregnant at that time? Had she already had the baby? Was she worried about the future? There are no answers to these questions, and they just take up space in the book.
I tend to read more first-person accounts, so I was connecting the title with the diary. Maybe that was a mistake on my part. The wide scope of her story also seemed unnecessary. She details the history of her family name and general history of her family. And some of that is speculative. It just wasn't for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment