Reviews

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

genre_fiction_is_literature's review against another edition

3.0

The Kindly Ones is a haunted house with real ghosts and infinite rooms. Our narrator, a Nazi Forrest Gump, takes us on an intimate journey that transverses nearly every angle of the Holocaust. It's a fascinating achievement that touches on music, language, cuisine, weather, neuroscience, sexuality, philosophy, nutrition, murder and perversions of all flavors. It's sick, heart-wrenching, intelligent but uneven.

Five page paragraphs that need serious trimming are mixed in with superb stretches of painfully effective writing. Military titles and German names blur together but maybe that's part of the point. Every time one freak is moved or killed they are quickly replaced by another. The narrator attempts to demonstrate the futility of disobeying...it was pointless, look so many others are willing.

Try a hundred pages, get thoroughly horrified and ask yourself – am I prepared to wallow in such a dark story for so long? Recommended to those who wished American Psycho was three times longer.

ayahefnawy5's review

4.0

One of the most shocking novels ive read

simonbb's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

ladydewinter's review against another edition

5.0

This book was very difficult to read. And I cannot say that I enjoyed it, because when talking about this book, this would feel very, very wrong. But it was indeed an amazing book that left me absolutely horrified. Not just because of the graphic massacre scenes but even more because this book made it so obvious how obscene people must have operated during the Third Reich - the bureaucratic squabbling about the best method to transport people to a place and how they might be killed most efficiently - that was very difficult to read. But all the same, I am glad I read it, and I think it's a book I want to read again, at a later point.

pveeto's review against another edition

5.0

È un romanzo che funzionerebbe bene anche se fosse estrapolato dal suo contesto, ma è proprio l'ambientazione a renderlo potente ed epico nel suo incessante orrore che va ben oltre il "semplice" orrore della guerra.
È sicuramente una lettura impegnativa, sia perché richiede un certo stomaco, sia perché si dilunga spesso per pagine e pagine su questioni collaterali (come tutta la parte dedicata alla linguistica), ma premia il lettore che non si lascia spaventare.

juliancheltenham's review

1.0

I couldn’t do it; the blow by blow accounts of the Second World War, the endless horrific accounts of the murder of Jews and the entirely unsympathetic narrator made this book unreadable for me. If it had been 200 pages long I would have stuck with it but at more than 900 pages long, I couldn’t. This book also disturbed my sleep and gave me nightmares.

aliteracja's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Antisemitism, and War

lisedelabie's review against another edition

4.0

Het was het moeilijkste boek dat ik ooit gerecenseerd heb. Zo wreed, zo intellectueel, zo choquerend.
Mijn recensie vind je hier: http://www.tussendroomendaad.be/jonathan-littellde-welwillenden/

jessriguez's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

korrick's review

4.0

Madness. Despicably disgustingly amazingly crafted madness. The ability of authors to write out these scenarios, diving into and drowning in the minds of the most horrific human beings imaginable, without completely losing their minds astounds me sometimes.

Maximilian Aue is just a byproduct of this whole history, if you can believe it. He starts out with horrific tendencies, to be sure

Spoiler

: incest from an extremely young age, coprophilia, murderous inclinations

. And then comes the war and its horrible mesh of insane procedures combined with genocide in the name of a logic that only exists in minds blinded by 'the bigger picture'. The motto of the war? It's someone else's responsibility. Every bit of it.

And the sheer idiocy of it: setting out to wipe out entire races while simultaneously saving them for an efficient work force? The entire war effort of the Germans degenerated into a paradox along these lines; at the end it became nothing more than an atrocious mess of confusion and futile attempts at maintaining order, and above all rampant killing. You look at Dr. Aue, and you look at a microcosm that contains a good deal of the horrors. The thing is, even he wasn't enough of a monster to fully appreciate them

Spoiler

; the war machine around him combined with extreme physical trauma tormented his conscience into complete insanity

. One of the more completely fucked up characters of literature.

You have to appreciate the detail of the book; it's so easy to sink into the world described from every aspect of cultural/political/societal context. Of course the sick taste of madness never fully leaves the pages; the aim of the book is not to leave you comfortable. Yes, quite a bit of this book will turn your stomach. But if you condemn it solely because of that, you're missing the entire point that Germany in WWII was not a nice place. It would sicken you then, so there's no point if it doesn't sicken you now.

In a more accredited person's words:

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

-Oscar Wilde