Scan barcode
lilinas's review
adventurous
dark
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Excrement, Antisemitism, War, Genocide, Xenophobia, and Incest
Moderate: Child death, Death, Murder, and Vomit
Minor: Rape and Torture
babydragonmom7314's review
1.0
I got to about page 300 in this (I lost the marker unfortunately). I don't think I will pick it back up again (and probably want to start from the beginning if I did). I thought I could get past the gratuitous violence and I couldn't. I think I was daring myself to read it in the first place and miscalculated my reaction. Many of the reviews talked about the violence and how unnecessary it was and I didn't want to agree and i think I do. It's a shame, I would have liked to have seen where it went, but just couldn't stomach the death and destruction.
By no means do I think it is a terrible book per se, but it is hard not to feel like he was writing certain passages for the shock value and I just couldn't take the manipulation.
By no means do I think it is a terrible book per se, but it is hard not to feel like he was writing certain passages for the shock value and I just couldn't take the manipulation.
jelena666's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
nick_jenkins's review
5.0
Most of what has been said in criticism of this book has deeply misrepresented it: yes, there is horrible brutality well beyond simple war narration (which you will find in almost every post-WWI novel or non-fiction book). This brutality will disturb every reader (or should). Yes, some of the main character's sexual obsessions will make most readers squirm a bit even if they aren't exactly squeamish. But to read these elements as the basic character and most memorable aspects of the book is cherry-picking--it's not a question of poor interpretation but just poor representation of the actual experience of reading this book. The representation of bureaucracy and the rather Mann-like dialogues peppering the book are, I feel, much closer to the heart of the experience of reading the novel--this is what drives the book forward and this is what really finds a home in the reader.
I'm certainly not saying that everyone will find this book engaging, and I certainly dislike the attitude of some critics who are using this book to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Asking anyone to read nearly a 1000 pages is a little presumptuous, and 1000 pages that contains maybe 75-100 extremely brutal and/or scatological pages even more so. I think the book justifies its inclusion of those 100 or so pages, and I think those 100 pages are critical to an understanding of the book, but I do not think they are, as they have been made out to be, the whole book, nor do they saturate the book. If you have merely been put off by the negative reviews, but were originally intending to read this book, please do.
I'm certainly not saying that everyone will find this book engaging, and I certainly dislike the attitude of some critics who are using this book to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Asking anyone to read nearly a 1000 pages is a little presumptuous, and 1000 pages that contains maybe 75-100 extremely brutal and/or scatological pages even more so. I think the book justifies its inclusion of those 100 or so pages, and I think those 100 pages are critical to an understanding of the book, but I do not think they are, as they have been made out to be, the whole book, nor do they saturate the book. If you have merely been put off by the negative reviews, but were originally intending to read this book, please do.
allanvdh's review
4.0
This is a very intense book to get through. The violence is very blunt and macabre the sex is full on shock value and the morals leave you questioning the whole book. But it’s very well written and gives such a great description of WW2 from a side not often explored.
The one insanity of war keeps coming round to drive the protagonist even more deranged with each day.
This book took me a long time to read. Often I had to stop for my own mental health but in the end I am wowed by how much has been captured so accurately by the author and narrator.
The one insanity of war keeps coming round to drive the protagonist even more deranged with each day.
This book took me a long time to read. Often I had to stop for my own mental health but in the end I am wowed by how much has been captured so accurately by the author and narrator.
shachargannot's review against another edition
3.0
I can see and appreciate the Herculean task that Jonathan Little undertook to conduct the endless research necessary to make this novel historically accurate. This is a long book, and to ensure that every sentence in it rings true is to be commended. That being said, as a novel written to help us readers “get in the mind of a Nazi,” it fails.
I know that many disagree with that statement, but I cannot say that I “understand the Nazi mind” now in a way that I didn't 975 pages ago. When I just started reading, I read every passage explaining the Nazi ideology and the “logical” contours of National Socialism with great interest. Afterwards, these musings just became repetitive and uninteresting. They killed because they could. They killed because they needed to provide for the Volk. They killed because those they killed were “useless mouths.” They would not have killed had the war not forced their hand.
I was told that reading The Kindly Ones would be a horrifying experience because of what the book attempts to do, and in seeing the different elements of the war. My sincerest apologies if this novel does not rile me up after I spent weeks reading an actual history book about the concentration camps. KL was significantly more horrific. Reality is scarier than fiction, even if said fiction is based on reality.
Littell’s choice to make Aue a gay man was incredibly problematic. That choice feeds into the stereotype of tying Nazism to debauchery and sexual perversion – that is, tying being gay with sexual perversion. This is especially the case with Aue not only seeking sex with men, but also in grooming young boys in the military to have sexual intercourse with him, but also in his sexual history with and attraction to his sister. These incestuous sexual fantasies took up at least 90 pages, or 10% of the book. I really do not understand why they were necessary and what they added to the narrative. Are we meant to believe that all Nazis had sick minds? I think that Christopher Browning demonstrated that this was not the case. These were "ordinary men," forced to do extraoardinary things. But if you provide us with an anti-hero like Aue -- who is a preverse man to begin with -- how are we to buy that he really is the "everyman" of the Nazi leadership?
On a personal note, the absence of women was exasperating. The only women in the story were Aue’s mother, sister and the German woman he had the brief affair with towards the end. The last two women were there for his sexual desires. I know that certain stories – especially military and political histories – lend themselves to a cast of characters that is largely composed of men. But that begs the question – why do we keep telling these stories? Aren’t women’s experiences just as interesting and important? What would a female guard’s story look like, and how would it differ from Aue’s? I doubt all the women in Nazi Germany would have their eyes glaze over with tears at the reality of the Third Reich killing women and children (speaking of, I hate the phrase “women and children,” as if women are just as defenseless as their kids. You know who else belongs in that group? Men. Civilian men were in the exact same position as civilian women.)
Overall, The Kindly Ones exhausted me, and not in the way that it was meant to. From an early age, we are taught not to write block paragraphs – I don’t know if that is an American thing, and the French find this an acceptable way to write, or whether this was Littell’s particular writing choice. It was awful. The one good thing about reading this book is that I am able to understand the timeline of the war in a way that I have been struggling to do for a while now. Hopefully, this improves with every new book I read. And hopefully, again, it is not by reading books like this.
I know that many disagree with that statement, but I cannot say that I “understand the Nazi mind” now in a way that I didn't 975 pages ago. When I just started reading, I read every passage explaining the Nazi ideology and the “logical” contours of National Socialism with great interest. Afterwards, these musings just became repetitive and uninteresting. They killed because they could. They killed because they needed to provide for the Volk. They killed because those they killed were “useless mouths.” They would not have killed had the war not forced their hand.
I was told that reading The Kindly Ones would be a horrifying experience because of what the book attempts to do, and in seeing the different elements of the war. My sincerest apologies if this novel does not rile me up after I spent weeks reading an actual history book about the concentration camps. KL was significantly more horrific. Reality is scarier than fiction, even if said fiction is based on reality.
Littell’s choice to make Aue a gay man was incredibly problematic. That choice feeds into the stereotype of tying Nazism to debauchery and sexual perversion – that is, tying being gay with sexual perversion. This is especially the case with Aue not only seeking sex with men, but also in grooming young boys in the military to have sexual intercourse with him, but also in his sexual history with and attraction to his sister. These incestuous sexual fantasies took up at least 90 pages, or 10% of the book. I really do not understand why they were necessary and what they added to the narrative. Are we meant to believe that all Nazis had sick minds? I think that Christopher Browning demonstrated that this was not the case. These were "ordinary men," forced to do extraoardinary things. But if you provide us with an anti-hero like Aue -- who is a preverse man to begin with -- how are we to buy that he really is the "everyman" of the Nazi leadership?
On a personal note, the absence of women was exasperating. The only women in the story were Aue’s mother, sister and the German woman he had the brief affair with towards the end. The last two women were there for his sexual desires. I know that certain stories – especially military and political histories – lend themselves to a cast of characters that is largely composed of men. But that begs the question – why do we keep telling these stories? Aren’t women’s experiences just as interesting and important? What would a female guard’s story look like, and how would it differ from Aue’s? I doubt all the women in Nazi Germany would have their eyes glaze over with tears at the reality of the Third Reich killing women and children (speaking of, I hate the phrase “women and children,” as if women are just as defenseless as their kids. You know who else belongs in that group? Men. Civilian men were in the exact same position as civilian women.)
Overall, The Kindly Ones exhausted me, and not in the way that it was meant to. From an early age, we are taught not to write block paragraphs – I don’t know if that is an American thing, and the French find this an acceptable way to write, or whether this was Littell’s particular writing choice. It was awful. The one good thing about reading this book is that I am able to understand the timeline of the war in a way that I have been struggling to do for a while now. Hopefully, this improves with every new book I read. And hopefully, again, it is not by reading books like this.
cami19's review
It was too much for me. I read a review that said it just got more difficult so I was done with it.