A review by cori_reads2
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński

3.0

This book was ROUGH! A brutal depiction of World War Two that portrays the ugliness and cruelty of men. I listened to this as an audio book and I had to take a long break from it about two-thirds through. The attack and pillaging scene of the village toward the end was a little too much for me. This is not a book I normally read and I was not sure I could finish it. But I have conflicted feelings about it. On the one hand, why would anyone want to write such horrible brutality and the baseness of men. I found it disturbing that anyone would write this. But on the other hand, this is one of the more accurate depictions of the war and how utterly and absurdly cruel it all was. So many novels about the war, especially the more recent historical fiction novels, sugar coat the brutality of the war. Even when they attempt to describe some of the awfulness authors still don’t strike at the heart of the experience people had. This book doesn’t hold any punches and calmly and dispassionately depicts horrible acts of violence. So if you want an authentic account of the war, this is the book. But if you would rather have a sugar coated tale of heroism, stay far away from this book!