Customer Reviews

Andersonville

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is one of the most remarkable books that you will ever experience. It has a reputation as a "tough read," but the effort is more than worth it. You will come to KNOW these characters. The ambience of the story is as superbly rendered as the characterizations, and the "you are there" texture of the book is felt with intensity. There are no quotation marks in the speech, so sometimes it's difficult to tell if the character is talking or if it's internalization. Remarkably, this adds to the power of the book. As a reviewer noted earlier, there's a dream-like quality to the prose that would have been diminished by adding quotes. The author breaks some rules by changing point-of-view, tense, and person, yet it all works so well that it does not detract in any way. You may find yourself drifting away at times; not out of boredom, but because Kantor makes you think about what you've just read. If you have ever lost a friend or family member in a war this story will be painful. It is emotionally charged (excuse the cliche) to the highest possible point. I agree with most readers that "Gone With The Wind" and "The Killer Angels" and "Cold Mountain" are five-star novels, but "Andersonville" is on another level. Thirty stars, perhaps. You'll nevr forget Ira and Lucy and the men (and women) of "Andersonville."

This won't be a long review.

This is a story about the infamous Andersonville prison of Civil War fame, into which tens of thousands of Northerners were inhumanely confined under obscene conditions.

MacKinley Kantor introduces and keeps faithful track of scores of characters, and does each and every one of them full justice. Whether he is illuminating the background of a simple soldier or conveying the daily goings-on of the locals, the way he maintains the unity of this massive narrative is a marvel.

The main character, and the moral center of the story, is Ira Claffey, a Southern farmer, slave-owner and philosopher. Though in this day and age most people would argue that a slave-owner cannot be moral, Kantor suggests otherwise. The beauty of Ira's character is that it is capable of accepting and adapting to the great social unheaval the Civil War brought to the South, and we are shown in other characters, most notably his wife Veronica, what happens to those who cannot accept and adapt.

Most striking of all is the humanity to be found inside and outside the four walls of the cesspool of disease and despair that Andersonville stockade quickly became. Some passages are almost too heartbreaking to read, and others lift the spirits like a tonic. It may seem contradictory, but there is great beauty in this book about evil, suffering, and death.

I can't recommend this book highly enough, or do it any sort of justice in writing a few paragraphs about it. You must read it.

MacKinlay Kantor won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1955 for his novel "Andersonville", an epic account of the notorious prison camp in Southwest Georgia which operated from February 1864 till the end of the Civil War. An Iowan, Kantor seems to have strived to be impartial, but there are not-always subtle parallels between Andersonville and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The superintendant of the stockade was Henry Wirz, a Swiss who was educated in Berlin. His heavy accent is emphasized throughout the book; and near the end Kantor has written a haunting scene in which a Union officer arrests Wirz, the latter protesting that he was only following orders. (I'm not revealing plot elements here, it's a matter of historical record: in 1865 Wirz was executed as a war criminal.) The horrors of the prison are contrasted with outside digressions. One digression is the prisoners' memories of happier times in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and in what is called York State. Kantor's aim is to make the prisoners real people, not just faceless statistics. (Indeed, Chapter LIV is a young fifer's full life, from first impression to an out-of-body experience.) Another digression is the existence of residents in the vicinity of the stockade, whose lives are blighted by the neighboring corruption. The most important of these is Ira Claffey, a fictional plantation owner in his fifties, who has lost three sons in the War and whose wife goes mad with grief. (After the fall of Atlanta, Claffey, presuming on a slight acquaintance with Jefferson Davis, attempts to reach Richmond to plead for the cause of the Andersonville inmates, but he is stymied by the looting panic of retreat.) Many readers have commented on Kantor's decision not to use quotation marks. I was slightly disconcerted in the opening pages; but as I became more deeply involved with the book, I found that I had no difficulty discerning which were quotes and whose they were. It also gives the narrative a tougher, more documentary tone, appropriate for such a grim topic. Grim it ineviatably is. There's a skillfully ironic episode in the second half in which a young Rebel veteran discovers a Union escapee. The Southerner has lost a leg, the Yankee a hand, both at Gettysburg, and there's an eerie outside chance that they may have maimed each other. Their relationship and its effect on their lives is symbolic of what's happened to their severed country, and Kantor's artistic story makes Andersonville a microcosm of a disasterous conflict.

Before "Killer Angels", before "Cold Mountain", there was MacKinley Cantor's "Andersonville". If you have never read "historical fiction" set in the Civil War period, this should be the first one you read. Do not be intimidated by the size of this book. The first time I picked it up, I was told my father read it by staying up all night, completing it in one sitting. I don't recommend that, but you will NOT want to put this down. The characters are so real, the descriptions of the terrible conditions there so vivid.. Read this book and you will want to grab other books of the same type.

This book is astounding in its scope, detail and depth of characters. The way Kantor spins the intimate lives of so many individuals around the central thread of the Claffey family and the prison... It is simply amazing. I see many of the previous reviews complaining that this was a difficult read. I did not find it so, but the writing IS like thick rye bread or dark heavy beer. You aren't going to be able to plow through 300 pages a night. The writing is saturated with detail and will drift for chapters into recollections or musings of various characters. People who are linear thinkers probably will have trouble with this book, because this is not just a story about Andersonville. It's a giant timeless snapshot of humanity.

For years I had wanted to read this, and when I finally got around to it, I was a little disappointed. On the positive side, Kantor creates characters who come alive and touch your heart. His attention to detail makes it possible to visualize seemingly every square inch of the camp, and many scenes depicting the horrors within are so emotionally powerful it becomes difficult to continue reading. However, the mountains of detail often become oppressive and interfere with the flow of the story. And because I found the writing rather awkward, I frequently had to reread sentences and entire paragraphs in order to fully grasp the meaning. The book is remarkable, but with some serious editing, it could have been a masterpiece.

I think this must have been one of my father's books, but somehow it found its way into my library where it sat on the self for years before I read it. My feelings are mixed about it- I am glad I read it, but I don't think I will read it again. Like previous reviewers, I found the writing style ponderous and the length just a little too long. It would have been a better book if the author edited a couple hundred pages out. Nevertheless, I am glad that I read it.

The images of the prison camp- the sewage filled creek, the squalor and the filth in which these prisoners lived, the gangs of thugs who preyed on the weakened soldiers and the constant fear of inflection in which these poor people lived has stayed with me twenty years after reading it. No, it is not great literature, but the author was successful in that he wrote a book that touches the reader with images so vivid that they will stay with him forever.

Andersonville is one of those books that takes a tremendous amount of effort to read. But those willing to expend the effort will be rewarded handsomely.

Not only does the Hardcover version clock in at nearly 800 pages but Kantor doesn't use any quotation marks to denote conversation. Couple that with the liberal use of mid to late 1800's provincial English, then you'll get an understanding why each page in this book is a challenge. But once you begin to catch on to Kantor's rhythm you will find yourself devouring each page like the delectable gumbo of a story it is.

Though the storyline is essentially linear - it begins when the land is being scouted as a potential site for a new prison and ends after the last prisoner is gone - there are many many detours along the way. There are a handful of people that remain part of the story from the beginning, but the bulk of the book is about the lives of the prisoners and how the infamous Andersonville impacted their lives. And it's in this myriad of stories where the book really comes alive. Kantor does a wonderful job in helping the reader to understand the history and motivations of the characters and in developing a deeper understanding why some succumbed to the horrors of Andersonville and others survived.

And for those who may choose not to read this because they aren't interested in prison stories or civil war era stories, know that Andersonville is as much a story of the prison as it is a story about the lives of the prisoners and the guards, the impact the prison had in it's neighbors and the horrors and moral quandaries of war.

If you enjoy stories that present a handful of seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces that when assembled together reveal a fascinating, intricate and beautiful piece of art, then you will find Andersonville completely gratifying. And, if on top of that, you enjoy civil war era historical fiction then this book is not be missed - no matter what effort it takes to read.

I have been a big reader all of my life but there are only a few books I've read that I can honestly say really changed my view of the world. "Walden" was one, "Andersonville" was another. Call me naive but before I read "Andersonville" I hadn't realized just how cruel people were capable of being to each other. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Don't be misled by the cannon on the cover of the 1993 Plume cover, Andersonville has nothing to do with a Civil War battle. It is the story of a prison camp in Georgia, and the intersecting lives of Rebel and Yankee who found themselves involved in a horrific situation during our country's toughest years. It is a very long book, and is far from a page-turner, so before you make the time commitment consider the following.

There is no hero in this story, only participants in disaster. The author forfeits any continuity in favor of a lurking uncertainty by constantly switching viewpoints and introducing new characters, while removing old ones without hesitation. Some men died at Camp Sumter, some didn't, but either way the author gives us time to get to know many of them, and thus their experiences at Andersonville are given richer meaning. It is not ordinarily good writing to 'kill off' so many sympathetic characters, but of course this book wants to layer the pathos on thick. This can make for slow and sometimes discouraging reading, never allowing the reader to get too close to any individual character. Only Ira Claffey, a fictional landowner near the camp, even resembles a protagonist, and his losses remain the most personal in the novel.

Despite all that, the glimpses into the past cover a huge slice of humanity as it existed in the mid 1800s. Kantor explores every dimension of prison society; Rebel and Yankee, urban thug or rustic clod, prisoner or guard or hopeless surgeon. His research is impecable, and the writing is varied and subtle. The common thread through it all is the camp itself, and how it threatened to destroy everyone who came in contact with it. In contrast, there are moments- most of them near the end of the novel- where I had to choke back tears and laugh aloud almost simultaneously. So it isn't entirely depressing, either, and the glimmers of human charity and decency become even more poignant from the contrast.

This reader's final estimation is that the time taken to read Andersonville was well spent, but not necessarily enjoyed. There is less beauty than tragedy in this novel, and the author's undeniable success in bringing Camp Sumter to life has the dubious value of making reading about it distastful. I certainly don't recommend this as light reading, but strongly encourage interested readers to have some patience and digest this book slowly to fully appreciate the statement about our nation, her people and her history.