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A review by kerryanna2709
The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
3.0
I have lots of different feelings about this book. It drew me in really quickly but then became incredibly repetitive. Although the situation he's in is terrible, for me, Otto was not a likeable character and I'm unsure whether that was intentional.
I struggled with a couple of parts of the book. One was that Otto felt like the stereotype that anti-Semites had of Jews - rich and obsessed with money. Of course it was understandable that he was concerned about money and didn't want to lose all he'd worked for but it often felt that he cared more about his money than his wife or his son. If it had been written by someone who wasn't Jewish I would have found it offensive, instead I was just intrigued that the author went down this route. I was also surprised that a reference is made to the Jews being persecuted because of their faith (rather than referencing their race). Again, this felt like something that a non-Jew would write rather than a Jew.
It was a very different take on the horrors of 1938 and I wanted to keep reading and see what happened so I'm glad I've read it but I'm not really sure what I feel about it. I do wonder whether there are things that haven't translated well.
Finally, I love an ambiguous ending but this was too much of one, even for me!
I struggled with a couple of parts of the book. One was that Otto felt like the stereotype that anti-Semites had of Jews - rich and obsessed with money. Of course it was understandable that he was concerned about money and didn't want to lose all he'd worked for but it often felt that he cared more about his money than his wife or his son. If it had been written by someone who wasn't Jewish I would have found it offensive, instead I was just intrigued that the author went down this route. I was also surprised that a reference is made to the Jews being persecuted because of their faith (rather than referencing their race). Again, this felt like something that a non-Jew would write rather than a Jew.
It was a very different take on the horrors of 1938 and I wanted to keep reading and see what happened so I'm glad I've read it but I'm not really sure what I feel about it. I do wonder whether there are things that haven't translated well.
Finally, I love an ambiguous ending but this was too much of one, even for me!