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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
If I rated this solely off writing, I would rate it much higher. It is well written, and even written without great emotion, which I appreciate around horrific events. However, this book ruined my day, so it gets 2 stars. I wish I hadn't read this, the graphic assaults described here just never needed to enter my brain. I get that this is showing the horrors of war, and how that leaves everyone very alone. But I hate it.
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Warning: I talk about a really gross and disturbing scene from the book in this review, please do not read if you're going to be upset and/or offended by talk of graphic sexual violence.
This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But [b:The Painted Bird|18452|The Painted Bird|Jerzy Kosiński|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348130740s/18452.jpg|825359] did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Pretty much anyone who's ever had some level of history education will have heard of some of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, no matter how many times you read about human beings burning the children of other human beings and watching people slowly starve to death because of their race, religion or other factors, it is still just as shocking and horrifying. One of the areas sometimes neglected in these accounts of wartime cruelty is the suffering of non-German Jews and it may come as a shock to some to learn that more than 70% of those Jews murdered during Hitler's reign were actually from Poland and Russia. Also, all six extermination camps - as opposed to concentration camps - were located in Poland. [ * ]
So when Jerzy Kosinski came stumbling out of communist Poland with a story about a young boy who was sent to the Polish countryside by his parents to hopefully protect him from the horrors going on in that area of Europe during this time, a young boy who moved from remote village to remote village, finding and enduring the worst kind of horrors imaginable along the way, most of Kosinski's readers wrongly assumed that this book was autobiographical. Rather than correcting his audience, Mr Kosinski rode the wave of popularity and did nothing to change these misconceptions. I suppose if someone wanted to give me a million for something I hadn't done I'd probably take the money and run too, so I don't really care that the author wasn't more vocal with the truth of this book. But... what I do think is that the knowledge that this novel is complete fiction - even if this stuff did happen somewhere - turns a potentially moving tale into a gratuitous torturefest.
Just to compare this with [b:S.|278232|S. (A Novel About the Balkans)|Slavenka Drakulić|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348842762s/278232.jpg|1605415] - another fictional book about atrocities committed during war - I'm not saying that people cannot write successful fictional stories set during the holocaust or that it needs to be a memoir to be effective. But, where [b:S.|278232|S. (A Novel About the Balkans)|Slavenka Drakulić|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348842762s/278232.jpg|1605415] is a deeply moving tale that focuses on the internal effect had by the abuse which the captors inflicted upon their victims, [b:The Painted Bird|18452|The Painted Bird|Jerzy Kosiński|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348130740s/18452.jpg|825359] tells of a series of gruesome acts that vary from extreme beatings, to brutal rape scenes, to a man gouging out another man's eye with a spoon... and you have to ask yourself what he achieved other than making you feel physically ill at times. Pointless, mindless, disgusting scenes of violence that seem to me to be nothing but shock tactics.
After a while of reading all these disturbing scenes, you start to feel like you're in a Saw movie, like the author is trying to create scenarios that are each more repulsive than the last just to play with the characters a bit more, make their lives a bit worse. Like raping a woman with a glass bottle and then kicking her abdomen until the glass shatters and she bleeds to death. And I do not mind reading gross scenes of violence as long as I feel it contributes something and isn't just there to keep me wide-eyed long enough that I forget the book isn't very well written and there's been no character development. I find it somewhat insulting to all those people who genuinely suffered during the holocaust that Kosinski would use it in a such an awful, emotionally-manipulative way.
I feel like if I'd really wanted to experience violence, torture and rape without being moved in any way, then I could have just watched Game of Thrones. At least that has hot men for me to look at.
This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But [b:The Painted Bird|18452|The Painted Bird|Jerzy Kosiński|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348130740s/18452.jpg|825359] did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Pretty much anyone who's ever had some level of history education will have heard of some of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, no matter how many times you read about human beings burning the children of other human beings and watching people slowly starve to death because of their race, religion or other factors, it is still just as shocking and horrifying. One of the areas sometimes neglected in these accounts of wartime cruelty is the suffering of non-German Jews and it may come as a shock to some to learn that more than 70% of those Jews murdered during Hitler's reign were actually from Poland and Russia. Also, all six extermination camps - as opposed to concentration camps - were located in Poland. [ * ]
So when Jerzy Kosinski came stumbling out of communist Poland with a story about a young boy who was sent to the Polish countryside by his parents to hopefully protect him from the horrors going on in that area of Europe during this time, a young boy who moved from remote village to remote village, finding and enduring the worst kind of horrors imaginable along the way, most of Kosinski's readers wrongly assumed that this book was autobiographical. Rather than correcting his audience, Mr Kosinski rode the wave of popularity and did nothing to change these misconceptions. I suppose if someone wanted to give me a million for something I hadn't done I'd probably take the money and run too, so I don't really care that the author wasn't more vocal with the truth of this book. But... what I do think is that the knowledge that this novel is complete fiction - even if this stuff did happen somewhere - turns a potentially moving tale into a gratuitous torturefest.
Just to compare this with [b:S.|278232|S. (A Novel About the Balkans)|Slavenka Drakulić|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348842762s/278232.jpg|1605415] - another fictional book about atrocities committed during war - I'm not saying that people cannot write successful fictional stories set during the holocaust or that it needs to be a memoir to be effective. But, where [b:S.|278232|S. (A Novel About the Balkans)|Slavenka Drakulić|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348842762s/278232.jpg|1605415] is a deeply moving tale that focuses on the internal effect had by the abuse which the captors inflicted upon their victims, [b:The Painted Bird|18452|The Painted Bird|Jerzy Kosiński|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348130740s/18452.jpg|825359] tells of a series of gruesome acts that vary from extreme beatings, to brutal rape scenes, to a man gouging out another man's eye with a spoon... and you have to ask yourself what he achieved other than making you feel physically ill at times. Pointless, mindless, disgusting scenes of violence that seem to me to be nothing but shock tactics.
After a while of reading all these disturbing scenes, you start to feel like you're in a Saw movie, like the author is trying to create scenarios that are each more repulsive than the last just to play with the characters a bit more, make their lives a bit worse. Like raping a woman with a glass bottle and then kicking her abdomen until the glass shatters and she bleeds to death. And I do not mind reading gross scenes of violence as long as I feel it contributes something and isn't just there to keep me wide-eyed long enough that I forget the book isn't very well written and there's been no character development. I find it somewhat insulting to all those people who genuinely suffered during the holocaust that Kosinski would use it in a such an awful, emotionally-manipulative way.
I feel like if I'd really wanted to experience violence, torture and rape without being moved in any way, then I could have just watched Game of Thrones. At least that has hot men for me to look at.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Controversial, brutal unfiltered, explicit... not for the faint of heart
World War II in eastern Europe through the eyes of a 6-12 year old.
Jerzy Kosinski was considered "anti-Polish" for writing this book. (OV peeps, his wife was Mary Weir... who the Weirton Library is named for)
World War II in eastern Europe through the eyes of a 6-12 year old.
Jerzy Kosinski was considered "anti-Polish" for writing this book. (OV peeps, his wife was Mary Weir... who the Weirton Library is named for)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Torture, War
Moderate: Bullying
Controversial, brutal unfiltered, explicit... not for the faint of heart
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book was hard to read, not because of the difficult subject matter, but because the book was boring. There's no real plot to speak of. The boy's life just goes from bad to worse as the chapters rolled by. If I hadn't promised myself I would finish the book no matter what, I would have put it down after about 4 chapters. Fortunately, by chapter 15, the beatings intensified in brutality (perhaps "fortunately" was a poor choice of words) which refreshed my view of the books, but ultimately, the story was not enjoyable.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It’s trauma porn desperately trying to be Come and See. Its Fine. The main theme of the book was touched on and the main allegory explained fairly early with little expanded upon. A tough read because 3/4 is just this poor kid slogging from one terrible situation to another
There's a lot of hate out there for this book, and I can understand why. Riding the holocaust wave, the torture and violence added in the book just for the shock value, the morbid sexuality and the various rape scenarios, are all good reasons to never touch this book.
However, if you do: you're missing a good story. A story about a boy coming of age. A child trying to survive whilst taking effort to make sense of the nonsensical world. An adolescent trying to find meaning with the limited experience that he's had of the world. You'll be missing a book that tries to look at how morality is constructed in a young human, without trying to sugarcoat the whole deal.
Perhaps the thing I like the most about the book is that the protagonist is not a white knight or a saint. He does various horrific deeds not realizing the harm he is doing to himself and others. There is no regret in his mind because his perspective of the world is skewed. The book doesn't stop to show remorse or regret, and in that sense the Painted Bird is so much more mature than the typical "Hero's Tale."
Bottom line: If you think you can handle and perhaps overlook the extreme violence in this book, by all means go ahead and read it. If you're not comfortable with the morbid reality of human savagery, or if you're not comfortable with the subtle nature in which the moral fabric is woven in the mind of a child, I highly recommend my little pony.
However, if you do: you're missing a good story. A story about a boy coming of age. A child trying to survive whilst taking effort to make sense of the nonsensical world. An adolescent trying to find meaning with the limited experience that he's had of the world. You'll be missing a book that tries to look at how morality is constructed in a young human, without trying to sugarcoat the whole deal.
Perhaps the thing I like the most about the book is that the protagonist is not a white knight or a saint. He does various horrific deeds not realizing the harm he is doing to himself and others. There is no regret in his mind because his perspective of the world is skewed. The book doesn't stop to show remorse or regret, and in that sense the Painted Bird is so much more mature than the typical "Hero's Tale."
Bottom line: If you think you can handle and perhaps overlook the extreme violence in this book, by all means go ahead and read it. If you're not comfortable with the morbid reality of human savagery, or if you're not comfortable with the subtle nature in which the moral fabric is woven in the mind of a child, I highly recommend my little pony.
Definitely not what I was expecting. Not a based-on-true-story, historical kind of fiction. More like an original Grimm Brothers tale of morality, where a boy has to deal with awful and frightening things before finding his way back to his parents. It brought up all these questions for me: Nature vs. nurture; does violence beget violence; can people really be rehabilitated? An interesting, if disturbing, read.