Reviews - Frère d'âme: roman

3.3k reviews for:

Frère d'âme: roman

David Diop

3.82 AVERAGE

greenerolivetree's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

bibliobeth's review against another edition

2.5

I really couldn't get past the repetition in this very short story - it was so distracting and off-putting for me. I saw a review saying that they had counted and the phrase 'God's truth' was used 150 times! No idea why that decision was made but it didn't pay off here.

laurikas's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I read this book in a matter of hours.

It is brutal, graphic and very intense, but I very much admired the way it was written. The most horrific war scenes, mixed with traditional mythology, somehow made it into a very successful book in my honest opinion.

I know some people will find the cruelty and the aggressive portrait of masculinity very off-putting and even unpleasant, but I do think that's how it was. And sugar coating the past only makes it a disservice to our history.

aliciaprater's review against another edition

2.5

Firstly, this book should come with Trigger Warnings (something I have become a lot more sensitive to since picking up The Kite Runner) so please be look at trigger warnings before reading this book.

This book has some incredibly sharp commentary on colonialism and the overall violence of wars, and the writer does do a really good job of illustrating the atrocities that everyday men commit during war times. The beginning of this book is pretty strong in the setting of what is going to happen, but for me it goes downhill very quickly.

The concept of a soldier taking ‘trophies’ is disturbing, but certainly not new, I don’t think I’ve seen it though as a soldier going out of their way to basically assassinated enemy soldiers and then taking a trophies. So it was hard for me to really see if in the sympathetic light that you are kind of meant as it meant to be a depiction of Alfa’s deteriorating mental state. When he could be classified as a serial killer who is collecting trophies. The focus though is on the way that the French soldiers utilise this violence for their own gains, while themselves believing it to be wrong, and associating it with the racist doctrine of a ‘violent African’.

Also, as a note this book has the phrase ‘God’s truth’ in it 153 times (yes I counted) with multiple chapters starting with it, including consecutive chapters.

My biggest issue with this book, is the constant respective use of sexual metaphors to describe the trenches (of which are all about women and does feel misogynistic especially given how they graphic they are) are frankly disturbing. Especially in a book that isn’t ‘old’ this book was released in 2018, and I did keep comparing to my experience reading All Quiet on the Western Front which again is another translated depicting soldiers who fought in WW1. but I enjoyed that book more and that book is nearly 100 years old. That book I don’t have any complaints about, whereas this book I do.