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A review by troetschel
This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke
3.0
I don't quite know how I really feel about This Rebel Heart. It's 433 pages and sometimes it truly felt like it. But sometimes it really grabbed my attention and went so quickly.
It's historical fiction and magical realism mixed up together, but they did not mesh together perfectly. I would be really getting into the historical fiction aspect of it when the magical realism side would pop up again and you could feel this slight friction. I think the book simply expects you to take everything at face value, but the overall tone of the book is also one of a giant metaphor. I listened to this on audio and the narrator gives the prose such weight, all of the words and sentences and paragraphs are delivered with such earnestness that I can tell I'm supposed to find everything beautiful and meaningful and magical. But it also just didn't quite work all the way. I'm so sad to say it, because there was a story in here that I absolutely loved - Csilla and Tamas and Azriel and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, something that I've never read about before. The more I learn about the Jewish faith the more beautiful I find it. I love a story about rebellion and resistance and the bravery that comes along with it. It should have worked for me.
In the book, Csilla wakes up in her bed in her apartment in pieces and has to literally (not metaphorically) put herself back together. Her body parts have become detached, and she has to re-assemble herself every morning. By the end of the book, she's no longer coming apart overnight and her seams have been smoothed over. I can tell that This Rebel Heart was supposed to do the same thing, but I don't think it did. The pieces never really quite fit together for me.
It's historical fiction and magical realism mixed up together, but they did not mesh together perfectly. I would be really getting into the historical fiction aspect of it when the magical realism side would pop up again and you could feel this slight friction. I think the book simply expects you to take everything at face value, but the overall tone of the book is also one of a giant metaphor. I listened to this on audio and the narrator gives the prose such weight, all of the words and sentences and paragraphs are delivered with such earnestness that I can tell I'm supposed to find everything beautiful and meaningful and magical. But it also just didn't quite work all the way. I'm so sad to say it, because there was a story in here that I absolutely loved - Csilla and Tamas and Azriel and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, something that I've never read about before. The more I learn about the Jewish faith the more beautiful I find it. I love a story about rebellion and resistance and the bravery that comes along with it. It should have worked for me.
In the book, Csilla wakes up in her bed in her apartment in pieces and has to literally (not metaphorically) put herself back together. Her body parts have become detached, and she has to re-assemble herself every morning. By the end of the book, she's no longer coming apart overnight and her seams have been smoothed over. I can tell that This Rebel Heart was supposed to do the same thing, but I don't think it did. The pieces never really quite fit together for me.