A review by pdxviastl
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

2.0

This book started off really interesting. I really enjoyed learning about Hitler's family, most of which was fairly historically accurate. However after about 150 pages the book began to lag and never really picked up again. I read some reviews when I just started to read the book and I thought that they were a bit harsh, b/c at that point I was enjoying the book quite a bit. Turns out that those folks were right and I just hadn't read far enough. The book was way too long for the content, or at least how Mailer decided to present the content. The bee stuff took too much time and was kind of pointless and drawn out and the whole idea of good vs evil, devil vs angel thing was not very well thought out and kind of a waste of time as well. That's not a good sign for the book b/c between these two topics there wasn't a whole lot more (besides the pointless chapter on the Tsar and Tsarina), which was interesting but not related to the story at all. I think that the devil thing was an easy way to present the conflict of good and evil in Hitler and in all of us and was a lame way to try and attempt this. It was more interesting for me to think of Hitler as a child, innocent like all children, and then think about his transformnation into the person we think of when someone says his name. This book was a waste of time to read and could have been a lot better if it had continued as it started, a fairly historically accurate of Hitler's family and his youth. The only reason I read the whole thing was b/c by the time it started to get slow I was already a good chunk of the way in and I continued to read hoping it would return to content as interesting as the beginning. It never did. I have read two other books by Mr. Mailer and I really enjoyed them ("The Executioners Song" and "The Naked and the Dead"). This book was a disappointment. If you want to read something good (@ least in my opinion) by Norman Mailer read the two previously mentioned books, if you want to read something bad by him, read this!