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3.22 AVERAGE
3.22 AVERAGE
Was not expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did. Part thriller, part Holocaust fiction - I found it to be well written and had the right amount of twists and turns without being too over the top.
You have to love the incredibly mixed reviews that the Amazon Kindle First books get! It's not my usual genre, but I'm not mad at it.
You have to love the incredibly mixed reviews that the Amazon Kindle First books get! It's not my usual genre, but I'm not mad at it.
I wasn't sure what I expected out of this book, but I was very surprised by how great a read it was. It was fast paced, tightly plotted, well developed and featured engaging characters. The devious villain was ruthless, yet garnered some amount of respect as a character. The protagonist was more complex - waaay more complex, you find out late in the story - than characters in most books these days. Would make an awesome movie!
This is a fast paced book that centers around the battle between a thief and his victim. Nick is an organized thief who poses as a moving company. He has a contact that feeds him upcoming moves and he shows up a day early and steal everything. Peke is a polish immigrant that is taken by Nick's scam, but then decides to track down the thief in an attempt to recover his belongings.
Peke manages to locate Nick and through the process of the pursuit, the author reveals more of Peke's past and it's effect on him. There were a few twists that I didn't expect. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it primarily in one sitting.
Peke manages to locate Nick and through the process of the pursuit, the author reveals more of Peke's past and it's effect on him. There were a few twists that I didn't expect. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it primarily in one sitting.
Excellent quick read. I really enjoyed the telling of the story. It seemed a bit heavy-handed at first, yes yes he was a Holocaust survivor, but the ins and outs of the story came out slowly over the course of the book and was highly entertaining/intriguing. It was such an immigrant story throughout both himself and the people he meets. The premise is great - a thief pretending to be the movers comes and takes everything from older people retiring and keeps it for themselves.
Only Peke decides to go get his stuff back - takes only his stuff and leaves. And then, haha irony of ironies - the thief feels driven to get the stuff "stolen" from him back... "I'm gonna get my things back. You can't just steal my things." But obviously they weren't his things... oh so cyclical. I really enjoyed the continual parallels with his 72-year-old self with the uniformed men coming and leaving his house and leaving nothing behind just as they had done to his 7-year-old-self. It's very symmetrical and neat. It's the cathartic experience he needed to have.
*Spoilers* It was a new idea for me that his parents had told him to run and abandoned him in order to save him and he ran wild with another young boy and felt powerful and powerless and full of life and on the edge of death and divided between longing and peace. I like how it all came back around in his time in Montana. It seems so cathartic for the old man to be experiencing the things he did as a kid again. The life and death, the survival in the woods, even the Nazis, complete in uniform. Especially the resolution of his friend, Abel, who was executed right next to him. It seems like he probably never got to mourn for the boy and that pain lingers.
We are at 90% before we get to the crux of what he experienced that day when he was seven. His mother guessing that he should run and play far away and him returning days later to find the house looted empty his parents gone. His Mom had said, "Go out in the woods and play and don't come back. Keep playing forever."
Jeez, Peke will not let it go. He survives the ordeal again and again and continues to ask for more more more. He could've left it when the guy stole his stuff. He could've hidden better once he got the stuff back. He should have died in the Montana woods. And surviving all of that he runs after the guy again? Never freaking ending. He could have been done and survived so many times but he keeps going after more. I wonder about the thief's background, more than just the foster care homes. How does he get the impulse of a survivor like Peke? His background must be similarly terrible to be as much of a survivor as the old man.
Oooh, cool I can access my highlights here:
24%: Because nothing else in the present can ever be as real. He wants his possessions back. Because he wants back the part of his identity that his possessions helped to make.
27%: “They survived.” Peke raises his eyebrows and gently corrects him. “But, Robert, my old friend, they were among the dead.” To be a survivor, Robert, means you emerged from among the dead.
50%: You can’t just come in here and steal my things, thinks Nick. I’m gonna get my things back.
52%: He is willing to trust policemen as individuals, but not the police as an institution.
92%: His home is gone, his parents are gone, his toys are broken, his bed is upended. But those facts aren’t separate from one another. Home, mother, father, room, bed: it is all the same thing to a seven-year-old. All tendrils of security, of being, of one’s place in the world. Home, mother, father, toys, things: all hopelessly inextricable and intertwined, all lost together. Everything, gone. Everything in his life—except his life. He felt life shift inside him as profoundly, as suddenly, as his life had externally changed. He can’t articulate—even to this day—precisely what that change was. But he felt it. Felt its rearrangement even physically.
94%: What is all this, really, here in the woods of Montana? Seeking a second justice for Abel? Seeking a second justice for himself? Or merely, futilely, seeking a resolution that can never come?
He is a child again. He feels Abel beside him. More than that. He can practically see Abel’s spirit next to him. But of course—Abel’s spirit has never left the woods. It has stayed here for more than sixty years, waiting for scrawny, clever little Pecoskowitz to rejoin him. He runs with Abel. He feels Abel next to him. In him.
And something else the wolf child knows, something else beneath expression: he’s been permitted to experience survival. To experience it again. But you are not permitted it indefinitely.
97%: The seven-year-old pretending to adult power, donning it, but found out at last. The seven-year-old, back on the familiar, cold mud floor of the woods. Looking up from the mud floor into the years of fear. Because you cannot defeat them.
98%: He feels the shock of brisk Montana air on his arms and torso. The blackness still lifting, he senses a kind of levitation of both body and soul, a sudden, weightless moment of profound calm, of grace, that he will liken, in the days ahead, to what others refer to as religious experience. Shedding the past—literally. Leaving it to the mud and rain. He understands who is standing there. He understands completely. It is him. In a different skin, from a different hemisphere, a half century later, but the same.
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." What an opening line! A clear choice for a #MontanaBook is #ARiverRunsThroughIt by #NormanMaclean, a total classic published in 1976 about two brothers in their 30s set in the late 1930s early 1940s in Montana. However, this was not the right choice for me right now - I read about half of this, but it just couldn't really keep my attention. It has beautiful writing that describes a mood and feeling and a time ("One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing." pg. 27) but for me a lot else kept existing in the world besides thoughts about fly fishing. I don't know. Maybe I’ll catch the movie! A book I loved (that spends a good portion of the story in Montana) was the exhilarating #MovingDay by #JonathanStone. The premise is great - a rather sophisticated thief impersonates a moving company and arrives a day early to load up EVERYTHING from older people retiring and keep it for himself. Only Peke decides to go get his stuff back - which takes him on a dangerous adventure, eventually to the wilds of Montana. As Holocaust survivor, there are continual parallels for Peke for his 72-year-old self having the uniformed men come to his house and leaving nothing behind, just as they had done to his 7-year-old-self. A thriller that has kept me thinking about it years after reading it. #MontanaBooks #Bookstagram #BooksAboutMontana #ReadMontana #50States50Books2020 #UnitedStatesOfBooks #50StatesofBooks #50StatesRead #50States50BooksETC #50States50BooksReadingChallenge
Only Peke decides to go get his stuff back - takes only his stuff and leaves. And then, haha irony of ironies - the thief feels driven to get the stuff "stolen" from him back... "I'm gonna get my things back. You can't just steal my things." But obviously they weren't his things... oh so cyclical. I really enjoyed the continual parallels with his 72-year-old self with the uniformed men coming and leaving his house and leaving nothing behind just as they had done to his 7-year-old-self. It's very symmetrical and neat. It's the cathartic experience he needed to have.
*Spoilers* It was a new idea for me that his parents had told him to run and abandoned him in order to save him and he ran wild with another young boy and felt powerful and powerless and full of life and on the edge of death and divided between longing and peace. I like how it all came back around in his time in Montana. It seems so cathartic for the old man to be experiencing the things he did as a kid again. The life and death, the survival in the woods, even the Nazis, complete in uniform. Especially the resolution of his friend, Abel, who was executed right next to him. It seems like he probably never got to mourn for the boy and that pain lingers.
We are at 90% before we get to the crux of what he experienced that day when he was seven. His mother guessing that he should run and play far away and him returning days later to find the house looted empty his parents gone. His Mom had said, "Go out in the woods and play and don't come back. Keep playing forever."
Jeez, Peke will not let it go. He survives the ordeal again and again and continues to ask for more more more. He could've left it when the guy stole his stuff. He could've hidden better once he got the stuff back. He should have died in the Montana woods. And surviving all of that he runs after the guy again? Never freaking ending. He could have been done and survived so many times but he keeps going after more. I wonder about the thief's background, more than just the foster care homes. How does he get the impulse of a survivor like Peke? His background must be similarly terrible to be as much of a survivor as the old man.
Oooh, cool I can access my highlights here:
24%: Because nothing else in the present can ever be as real. He wants his possessions back. Because he wants back the part of his identity that his possessions helped to make.
27%: “They survived.” Peke raises his eyebrows and gently corrects him. “But, Robert, my old friend, they were among the dead.” To be a survivor, Robert, means you emerged from among the dead.
50%: You can’t just come in here and steal my things, thinks Nick. I’m gonna get my things back.
52%: He is willing to trust policemen as individuals, but not the police as an institution.
92%: His home is gone, his parents are gone, his toys are broken, his bed is upended. But those facts aren’t separate from one another. Home, mother, father, room, bed: it is all the same thing to a seven-year-old. All tendrils of security, of being, of one’s place in the world. Home, mother, father, toys, things: all hopelessly inextricable and intertwined, all lost together. Everything, gone. Everything in his life—except his life. He felt life shift inside him as profoundly, as suddenly, as his life had externally changed. He can’t articulate—even to this day—precisely what that change was. But he felt it. Felt its rearrangement even physically.
94%: What is all this, really, here in the woods of Montana? Seeking a second justice for Abel? Seeking a second justice for himself? Or merely, futilely, seeking a resolution that can never come?
He is a child again. He feels Abel beside him. More than that. He can practically see Abel’s spirit next to him. But of course—Abel’s spirit has never left the woods. It has stayed here for more than sixty years, waiting for scrawny, clever little Pecoskowitz to rejoin him. He runs with Abel. He feels Abel next to him. In him.
And something else the wolf child knows, something else beneath expression: he’s been permitted to experience survival. To experience it again. But you are not permitted it indefinitely.
97%: The seven-year-old pretending to adult power, donning it, but found out at last. The seven-year-old, back on the familiar, cold mud floor of the woods. Looking up from the mud floor into the years of fear. Because you cannot defeat them.
98%: He feels the shock of brisk Montana air on his arms and torso. The blackness still lifting, he senses a kind of levitation of both body and soul, a sudden, weightless moment of profound calm, of grace, that he will liken, in the days ahead, to what others refer to as religious experience. Shedding the past—literally. Leaving it to the mud and rain. He understands who is standing there. He understands completely. It is him. In a different skin, from a different hemisphere, a half century later, but the same.
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." What an opening line! A clear choice for a #MontanaBook is #ARiverRunsThroughIt by #NormanMaclean, a total classic published in 1976 about two brothers in their 30s set in the late 1930s early 1940s in Montana. However, this was not the right choice for me right now - I read about half of this, but it just couldn't really keep my attention. It has beautiful writing that describes a mood and feeling and a time ("One great thing about fly fishing is that after a while nothing exists of the world but thoughts about fly fishing." pg. 27) but for me a lot else kept existing in the world besides thoughts about fly fishing. I don't know. Maybe I’ll catch the movie! A book I loved (that spends a good portion of the story in Montana) was the exhilarating #MovingDay by #JonathanStone. The premise is great - a rather sophisticated thief impersonates a moving company and arrives a day early to load up EVERYTHING from older people retiring and keep it for himself. Only Peke decides to go get his stuff back - which takes him on a dangerous adventure, eventually to the wilds of Montana. As Holocaust survivor, there are continual parallels for Peke for his 72-year-old self having the uniformed men come to his house and leaving nothing behind, just as they had done to his 7-year-old-self. A thriller that has kept me thinking about it years after reading it. #MontanaBooks #Bookstagram #BooksAboutMontana #ReadMontana #50States50Books2020 #UnitedStatesOfBooks #50StatesofBooks #50StatesRead #50States50BooksETC #50States50BooksReadingChallenge