Scan barcode
A review by secre
De udvalgte by Steve Sem-Sandberg
2.0
The subject matter covered by this novel is harrowing but the prose itself is bland and formulaic with no heart or soul behind it to catch you and draw you in. In fact, I would potentially go so far as to say that the only reason this novel has gained so many five star reviews is because of the content and because nobody wants to negatively rate a book about the forced euthanasia of so many children during Nazi times. But for all of the horrendous acts that are described; children dying due to procedures, being put down with medicines, guts hanging out of backsides and even the process of disembowelling oneself… this is somehow, bland and boring.
At no point do you gain any real attachment for the main characters, even though the tale is virtually told through two of them; a nurse and a boy in the same institution. I don’t think I ever really felt sorrow or pity despite knowing that what had happened was horrendously wrong. This book just didn’t draw me into these characters lives and force me to care about them. In fact, many times I would forget characters names entirely and be surprised when they were brought up later as I had somehow just assumed they were dead already. The naming conventions for staff and children kept changing as well, with them sometimes being referred to by first names, sometimes second names and because the names are not English this made it much harder to keep track of what was going on. With other characters there is no conclusion to the novel, no closure and threads are just left hanging in the wind.
The novels scope is also too broad, going from childhood to adulthood, to the pinnacle of these doctors careers to their deaths and trials. It just seemed to meander along and never pick up enough pace to be interesting. If anything the most interesting sections are the trial bits and these are right at the end and such a tiny fraction of the book that it’s almost as if they aren’t important. Instead you are bored to tears with the various tales of where Adrian goes after being moved from the institution as unreformable and it’s all as bleakly depressing and yet mind-numbingly boring as the rest of it… there’s no emotion or pull throughout… it is all just very bland, he did this, she did that.
This may be perhaps due to the translation. Perhaps it works better in its native language. Of that I cannot say. It is after all written with a clearly skilled hand, even if the style was certainly not to my taste. What I can say is that I found this dry, dreary and dull in spite of the fact that the content itself should have been horrifying. I found myself skipping paragraphs or even pages because I’d completely lost interest in it before picking up something vaguely eye catching for a while before once more becoming bored and fast reading again…
At no point do you gain any real attachment for the main characters, even though the tale is virtually told through two of them; a nurse and a boy in the same institution. I don’t think I ever really felt sorrow or pity despite knowing that what had happened was horrendously wrong. This book just didn’t draw me into these characters lives and force me to care about them. In fact, many times I would forget characters names entirely and be surprised when they were brought up later as I had somehow just assumed they were dead already. The naming conventions for staff and children kept changing as well, with them sometimes being referred to by first names, sometimes second names and because the names are not English this made it much harder to keep track of what was going on. With other characters there is no conclusion to the novel, no closure and threads are just left hanging in the wind.
The novels scope is also too broad, going from childhood to adulthood, to the pinnacle of these doctors careers to their deaths and trials. It just seemed to meander along and never pick up enough pace to be interesting. If anything the most interesting sections are the trial bits and these are right at the end and such a tiny fraction of the book that it’s almost as if they aren’t important. Instead you are bored to tears with the various tales of where Adrian goes after being moved from the institution as unreformable and it’s all as bleakly depressing and yet mind-numbingly boring as the rest of it… there’s no emotion or pull throughout… it is all just very bland, he did this, she did that.
This may be perhaps due to the translation. Perhaps it works better in its native language. Of that I cannot say. It is after all written with a clearly skilled hand, even if the style was certainly not to my taste. What I can say is that I found this dry, dreary and dull in spite of the fact that the content itself should have been horrifying. I found myself skipping paragraphs or even pages because I’d completely lost interest in it before picking up something vaguely eye catching for a while before once more becoming bored and fast reading again…