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A review by kendev
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
dark
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Would’ve been 5 stars if not for a few misgivings:
1. The ending felt rushed compared to the rest of the book, plus it was ruined for me by all the religious talk. I understand it was important to Zamparini’s life, but i do find it hard to believe that years of ptsd, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and turmoil was cured overnight after he saw two Billy Graham sermons in a tent. I’m sure his faith helped, but this seemed like an oversimplification and frankly a slap in the face to the thousands of other POWs suffering upon their return (i.e., doubt they were all cured by Jesus and magic sudden faith - what else helped people overcome the horrible things they went through? Seemed dismissive and as I said, an oversimplification).
2. The majority of the book focused on what was happening TO Zamparini. I would’ve liked to learn more about what was happening emotionally inside of him. I do recognize this was probably hard to do when the primary source is Zamparini himself, who no doubt wouldn’t have wanted to go too deep into that/uncover too much of the pain. But still, it got a tad repetitive when it was chapter upon chapter of “this happened to him, then this other horrible thing happened to him, then this even worse thing happened, etc etc” without many breaks telling us what was happening WITHIN him and how he managed to remain resilient for so long.
All in all, I still really enjoyed this and couldn’t put it down. I learned so much about the Pacific theater of WWII, of which I knew next to nothing about before reading this. Simply incredible and I would definitely recommend this
1. The ending felt rushed compared to the rest of the book, plus it was ruined for me by all the religious talk. I understand it was important to Zamparini’s life, but i do find it hard to believe that years of ptsd, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and turmoil was cured overnight after he saw two Billy Graham sermons in a tent. I’m sure his faith helped, but this seemed like an oversimplification and frankly a slap in the face to the thousands of other POWs suffering upon their return (i.e., doubt they were all cured by Jesus and magic sudden faith - what else helped people overcome the horrible things they went through? Seemed dismissive and as I said, an oversimplification).
2. The majority of the book focused on what was happening TO Zamparini. I would’ve liked to learn more about what was happening emotionally inside of him. I do recognize this was probably hard to do when the primary source is Zamparini himself, who no doubt wouldn’t have wanted to go too deep into that/uncover too much of the pain. But still, it got a tad repetitive when it was chapter upon chapter of “this happened to him, then this other horrible thing happened to him, then this even worse thing happened, etc etc” without many breaks telling us what was happening WITHIN him and how he managed to remain resilient for so long.
All in all, I still really enjoyed this and couldn’t put it down. I learned so much about the Pacific theater of WWII, of which I knew next to nothing about before reading this. Simply incredible and I would definitely recommend this