A review by kleonard
The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed by Wendy Lower

2.0

This memoir follows the work of the author in seeking out more information about a devastating photograph of the murder of Jews in Ukraine during the Second World War. The author's explanations and descriptions of the war and its various entities is often simplistic, and while her writing about the power of photography and its use during the war and after is more engaging and informative, she remains at a distance in the narrative, even as she sifts fragments of human bone from a mass grave. The writing is often stilted and in the passive voice. I don't know if this is to make the work seem more scholarly--it is non-fiction, but not scholarly at all--or because of her own lack of ease with the subject matter. Unfortunately, the book ends with tepid platitudes and is, as a whole, unsatisfying.