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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Studying this book for English.
At the beginning, Mulisch's style of describing EVERYTHING got on my nerves, but as I read on, either he didn't do this as much, or I got used to it. He uses some incredibly beautiful language to describe things, and although it is a bit hard to believe that he would have run into all of the characters that he did, overall, I really enjoyed this novel.
At the beginning, Mulisch's style of describing EVERYTHING got on my nerves, but as I read on, either he didn't do this as much, or I got used to it. He uses some incredibly beautiful language to describe things, and although it is a bit hard to believe that he would have run into all of the characters that he did, overall, I really enjoyed this novel.
An extremely well crafted novel from the generation of Europeans who grew up in the shadow of WWII. It reminded me very much of the work of Patrick Modiano, except the narrative felt more carefully constructed, thus presents itself a tad more self-consciously as a novel than Modiano's books do. The points the novel makes about childhood trauma, happenstance, guilt, and blame are all quite valid and perspicacious, but, because of how carefully crafted the narrative is, the points the text makes appealed almost exclusively to my thoughts rather than my emotions. It's almost too smart and well-crafted to replicate the messiness of life that it wants to depict. Thus the tension between the novel's craft and its theme became yet another point of interest, but was again a kind of intellectual distraction detaching me even further from the story and its emotional impact. (This could be brilliant as the narrator is also utterly detached, but it was frustrating none the less.) I found myself distracted into examining all of this narrative technique, psychology, and philosophy while I read, never quite taken away emotionally by the story itself--interesting as it is.
Perhaps the coldness or distance I felt in the novel is willful on the author's part, due to the narrator/protagonist's own detachment from his youthful traumatic experience. I wouldn't for a moment question the realistic nature of the character's response, but I do have to point out that it's frustrating to the reader of his narrative because we, voyeurs into his life, really want to know the details of the event that his traumatic response seeks to avoid and ignore up to the very end.
I guess that's why almost every novel these days is also at least partially a mystery novel: the detective plunging into an investigation mirrors perfectly a reader's plunging into a narrative and seeking new information with every word, sentence, and paragraph until we get the whole story. Thus avoidance of knowing, sublimation--also a very common human strategy in real life--just works less well in a narrative format as it makes a reader impatient with a first person narrator who seems to avoid learning what we so desperately want to know.
I guess I could see the craft of the writer behind The Assault in the perfect way that chance provided him with the information he refused to seek, thus creating a perfectly logical, step-by-step series of revelations both for him and us readers. Still, it's an excellent story and, as I said, I much appreciated what it says about trauma and human existence in history, chance, and responsibility.
Perhaps the coldness or distance I felt in the novel is willful on the author's part, due to the narrator/protagonist's own detachment from his youthful traumatic experience. I wouldn't for a moment question the realistic nature of the character's response, but I do have to point out that it's frustrating to the reader of his narrative because we, voyeurs into his life, really want to know the details of the event that his traumatic response seeks to avoid and ignore up to the very end.
I guess that's why almost every novel these days is also at least partially a mystery novel: the detective plunging into an investigation mirrors perfectly a reader's plunging into a narrative and seeking new information with every word, sentence, and paragraph until we get the whole story. Thus avoidance of knowing, sublimation--also a very common human strategy in real life--just works less well in a narrative format as it makes a reader impatient with a first person narrator who seems to avoid learning what we so desperately want to know.
I guess I could see the craft of the writer behind The Assault in the perfect way that chance provided him with the information he refused to seek, thus creating a perfectly logical, step-by-step series of revelations both for him and us readers. Still, it's an excellent story and, as I said, I much appreciated what it says about trauma and human existence in history, chance, and responsibility.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Aleer dan 100 keer heb ik dit boek tijdens de mondelingen besproken, maar nog nooit had ik het gelezen. Nu dan toch. Ik moet het zeggen, Mulisch is echt niet mijn favoriete auteur, maar fit was een prettig verhaal. Niet al te veel 'omgevallen boekenkasten' zoals ik had verwacht van Mulisch, maar een mooi verhaal over het lot, toevalligheid, verantwoordelijkheid en de schuldvraag.. precies zoals mijn leerlingen me altijd vertellen ;-)
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
На самом крају Другог светског рата, у Харлему, у окупираној Холандији, убијен је познати локални колаборациониста. Сплетом несрећних околности за тај чин ће бити оптужена и кажњена породица главног јунака – родитељи и брат биће му стрељани и кућа потпуно девастирана и запаљена. Након тога, једини преживели – дванаестогодишњи Антон, одселиће се из Харлема и трудити се да потисне и заборави та дешавања имајући наизглед нормалан живот. Постепено ће, ипак, откривати целу истину о страдању своје породице, као и учешћу бивших комшија и познаника у свему томе.
Роман је подељен у четири дела и скоковито пратимо Антонов живот, од те несрећне ратне ноћи, све до његовог зрелог живота. Кроз Антоново сазревање и одрастање и његове односе са околином, покрећу се питања кривице, културе сећања, али и моралности у ратним временима.
Мулиш се спомиње као један од најзначајнијих холандских књижевника ХХ века; писање је сведено, а низање сцена готово филмско. У сваком случају вредно читања и штета што нема превода на српски.
Роман је подељен у четири дела и скоковито пратимо Антонов живот, од те несрећне ратне ноћи, све до његовог зрелог живота. Кроз Антоново сазревање и одрастање и његове односе са околином, покрећу се питања кривице, културе сећања, али и моралности у ратним временима.
Мулиш се спомиње као један од најзначајнијих холандских књижевника ХХ века; писање је сведено, а низање сцена готово филмско. У сваком случају вредно читања и штета што нема превода на српски.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Excellent read. Not the type of book I normally go in for but this was an outstanding read. So glad my fiancée recommended this. You make me better Gabriella.
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Anton Steenwijk is an ordinary boy – keen on planes and cars, arguing with his older brother – living in the extraordinary time and place of Occupied Holland at the tail-end of the Second World War. Perhaps slightly more thoughtful than some of his peers, with a love of and keen eye for nature which will later see him publish poems on the subject. He is happy to spend time watching the wave patterns created by the motorboats on the canal outside his Haarlem home. He recalls ‘branches… bleached by the sun’, notices ‘bare, ice-coated, impassive trees that were totally unaware of what wartime was all about’, while damaged railway lines stand ‘upright like the horns of a snail’.
The War’s major intrusion into his life is via the hunger of a growing lad, although he also takes a stand for a classmate – perhaps saving a life as he does so – but he acts impulsively, without too much reflection on his motives. The incident remains unrecalled and unremarked upon until one winter’s night, when he is engulfed by terrible events that he neither fully witnesses nor understands, yet which leave him – the only survivor – with the revelation: 'Fire and this steel – that was the War.'
Despite this knowledge, as he matures he is successful in pushing away his memories in order to survive, before a series of chance encounters force him into unravelling the fate of his family. The secrets of one night of Resistance assassination and SS reprisal are imparted to him throughout his life, in a series of episodes from young student to middle-aged father, shocking Anton out of his attempt to live as passive a life as possible.
It is difficult not to think, on reading this book as we reach the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, of the consequences for the innocent caught up in war; the apparently small events sparked by unseen actors which rapidly take on greater significance. Chasing the tangled stories leads Anton to a semblance of an answer to the question why? as well as a realisation that the answer is both more and less important than he could have guessed. In the end, as the Resistance fighter Takes tells him: 'Everyone gets killed by whoever kills them, and by no-one else.'
Mulisch’s book is a clever blend of taut thriller, historical mystery and psychological study, with plenty to show the reader about reactions to traumatic events experienced by the young. We see how assumptions about the past can colour someone’s thinking so completely, yet later be exploded as resting on a false or misunderstood reading of those events. What appear to be key conversations and actions slip out of the memory, making a nonsense of any attempt to create patterns out of random events. This failure recalling Anton’s doomed attempts to figure out the complexity of the crossing, interlaced waves created by the motorboats passing him by on the canal.
The War’s major intrusion into his life is via the hunger of a growing lad, although he also takes a stand for a classmate – perhaps saving a life as he does so – but he acts impulsively, without too much reflection on his motives. The incident remains unrecalled and unremarked upon until one winter’s night, when he is engulfed by terrible events that he neither fully witnesses nor understands, yet which leave him – the only survivor – with the revelation: 'Fire and this steel – that was the War.'
Despite this knowledge, as he matures he is successful in pushing away his memories in order to survive, before a series of chance encounters force him into unravelling the fate of his family. The secrets of one night of Resistance assassination and SS reprisal are imparted to him throughout his life, in a series of episodes from young student to middle-aged father, shocking Anton out of his attempt to live as passive a life as possible.
It is difficult not to think, on reading this book as we reach the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, of the consequences for the innocent caught up in war; the apparently small events sparked by unseen actors which rapidly take on greater significance. Chasing the tangled stories leads Anton to a semblance of an answer to the question why? as well as a realisation that the answer is both more and less important than he could have guessed. In the end, as the Resistance fighter Takes tells him: 'Everyone gets killed by whoever kills them, and by no-one else.'
Mulisch’s book is a clever blend of taut thriller, historical mystery and psychological study, with plenty to show the reader about reactions to traumatic events experienced by the young. We see how assumptions about the past can colour someone’s thinking so completely, yet later be exploded as resting on a false or misunderstood reading of those events. What appear to be key conversations and actions slip out of the memory, making a nonsense of any attempt to create patterns out of random events. This failure recalling Anton’s doomed attempts to figure out the complexity of the crossing, interlaced waves created by the motorboats passing him by on the canal.