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sreddous 's review for:
The Night Travelers
by Armando Lucas Correa
This is a heart-wrenching, often frightening, suspenseful story about the ways that war and civil strife can impact generations and generations from the same family. Just when you think the next generation might be safe, might have a better chance at a happy life than the last -- bam, something makes it so that you're left with the narrator characters who are having to make extremely hard choices yet again. It's exhausting at times, and that's the point, because this sure does feel realistic even though it's historical fiction.
In that regard, even when the pacing is slower and it's taking time to build up what the new country's environment is like, tension is still simmering and I always felt engaged in finding out what decisions everyone would have to make next.
I think if there's anything a little bit nitpicky I wish we saw a tiny bit more of, it'd be the impact of the falling of the Berlin Wall -- the years that the new generations "pick up the narration" are all very impactful years in the histories of the countries they're in, and yet I feel like I don't remember much about the Berlin Wall really impacting Nadine's timeline as much as WWII impacted Ally's and the arrests in Cuba impacted Lilith's. Still, that's indeed nitpicky (what matters more in this story's framing than even the historical events is the focus on the family relationships and how the generations all feel about each other. And that IS what the "screentime" here gets).
Overall, this is tragic, sometimes romantic and flowery and fun, and full of forgiveness and regret, all of which feel so natural and well-built-up-to based on the scary times these characters have to live in.
(Content warning: descriptions of blood/medical procedures, antisemitic language, racist language)
In that regard, even when the pacing is slower and it's taking time to build up what the new country's environment is like, tension is still simmering and I always felt engaged in finding out what decisions everyone would have to make next.
I think if there's anything a little bit nitpicky I wish we saw a tiny bit more of, it'd be the impact of the falling of the Berlin Wall -- the years that the new generations "pick up the narration" are all very impactful years in the histories of the countries they're in, and yet I feel like I don't remember much about the Berlin Wall really impacting Nadine's timeline as much as WWII impacted Ally's and the arrests in Cuba impacted Lilith's. Still, that's indeed nitpicky (what matters more in this story's framing than even the historical events is the focus on the family relationships and how the generations all feel about each other. And that IS what the "screentime" here gets).
Overall, this is tragic, sometimes romantic and flowery and fun, and full of forgiveness and regret, all of which feel so natural and well-built-up-to based on the scary times these characters have to live in.
(Content warning: descriptions of blood/medical procedures, antisemitic language, racist language)