Customer Reviews

Just Revenge : A Novel

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Few things are more disappointing to a reader than a good story in the hands of a mediocre writer. Dershowitz is such a poor fiction writer that he drains the life from what is one of the most consistently compelling sources of fiction - the guilt and rage of survivors of unspeakable horror. His characters are so superficial and wooden that they distract from the ideas and issues he attempts to address. He totally fails to develop any type of psychological complexity in the participants in this drama. He is unable to tell his story through coherent actions and inner thoughts of his characters. As a result, he's forced to violate one of the main tenets of fiction writing - show, don't tell. He has to stop and tell us constantly why this character feels this or that, and he does it like a guy hitting a tack with a sledge hammer. There's no subtle development of each character's story, no gradual enlightenment of the reader as to why the various characters come to feel so deeply about Max, why they hate or support him, why they want to help or thwart him. The effect is jarring and distracting - female characters apparently having reasoned conversations suddenly burst into hysteria and tears - for one line only - then stop and continue their conversations. Max, after 50 years of stalwart sanity and self control, suddenly flops to the floor in a shrieking flashback, only to jump up and be his intellectual and controlled self again. The victim's son ... well, he makes no sense at all. The ending is so contrived and forced that it takes the punch out of the whole story - as if the author couldn't figure out a sensible way to arrive at the ending he wanted. He's forced, therefore, to have the victim's son do something so out of character that it leaves the reader feeling incredulous.

But there is one good thing to say about this story - Max's revenge is one of the most diabolically clever plans I've come across. It's damn near brilliant. Too bad it gets overwhelmed by bad prose writing.

Is the book worth reading? Well I finished it. It's a fast read, the story of the massacre of Max's family is compelling and his revenge is very satisfying. But it's not worth buying - check it out of the library.

Writing style is basic at best. Developoment of characters is flawed and uninteresting. The author uses great liberties in describing how our legal system is applied in a jury situation and some of it is actually inaccurate. Book does not create much suspense and many of the plots are given away by his use of present tense rather than past tense when describing the alleged murders of the Prandus family. The ending leaves you hanging and does not really address the issue of revenge murder. The book was a waste of money and the author should stick to teaching what he thinks the law is at Harvard.

Having written The Vanishing American Jew: In Search for Jewish Identity for the Next Century and that classic of self-celebration, Chutzpah, Mr. Dershowitz is himself something of a soi-disant expert on Jewish culture. Here he gives us a courtroom melodrama in which Abe Ringel-the hero of a previous Dershowitz thriller and, one can't help thinking, a stand-in for the author-gets the chance to try his dream case. His friend Max Menuchen, an aged, dignified, sympathetic Holocaust survivor, has learned that the Lithuanian officer who ordered the massacre of his family is alive in America. The old man concocts an elaborate revenge scheme, and when Max is accused of engineering the Lithuanian's death, Abe agrees to defend him.

It's difficult, really, to fully describe just how dreadful the novel is. Unable to distinguish between dialogue and exposition, Mr. Dershowitz treats us to passages like the following, in which Max relates a childhood memory: "`We must have looked strange,' Max said with a warm smile as he remembered the scene. `A portly old man with a flowing white beard and a fur hat, crawling around a dark attic, while his 18-year-old grandson, wearing a black suit and a yarmulke, with curly sidelocks and the beginning of a never-shaved beard, held a flickering candle.'" With no apparent interest in narrative verisimilitude or psychological credibility, he muddles up dramatic moments like this one: "`I could never forget your eyes!' Max bellowed as his hand, with a will of its own, smashed against Prandus' face.... Prandus cringed in fear, not from the force of the blow, but from Max's words. As he watched the powerful man's face twitch, Max heard King Lear's terrible words: `Tremble, thou wretch, that hast within thee undivulged crimes unwhipped of justice ...'"

But the novel's literary flaws are the least of it. What's galling is the righteousness with which Mr. Dershowitz advances his shaky moral agenda, with its explicit and disturbing endorsement of vigilante justice. ("My hope is that I have written a book that may lead a few people to better understand and empathize with the victims of the worst crime ever perpetrated by one group of human beings on another." The uses to which he puts the Holocaust are appalling; the mass murder that Max recalls seems not just generic but, detail for detail, suspiciously reminiscent of a similar scene in Night, by Elie Wiesel.

In Just Revenge, American-Jewish culture has been brought to new and previously unplumbed depths by Mr. Dershowitz's egregious attempt to reduce the Holocaust to a bad lawyer joke.

Alan Dershowitz has written a story of questioning theory.He is a thinking interlectual with a clear mind toward the pro and con of our countrys laws. This story is in the back of many of our minds. what if your family was wiped out by someone and you were left what would you do, or feel, or want? I would recommend this book highly to anyone that ever observed a criminal situation and said "if he would have done that to my family I would have_____!!! The book is a thinking mans read enjoy it.

Dershowitz reminds us that for victims of an atrocity such as the Holocaust, remembering is not enough. I felt Max's anguish and cheered him on - but also felt relieved that his revenge was visited upon the evil-doer rather than creating more innocent victims. Like Simon Wiesenthal in the "Sunflower," and Jerry Marcus in "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Zev," Dershowitz shows an exquisite sensitivity to the plight of those who survived the Holocaust and live daily with its legacy. He also understands that evil must be rooted out at its source - which is "Just Revenge."

This book makes you FEEL as well as think about an extremely disturbing moral and legal dilemma. It tempts readers to sympathize, if only for a moment and if only at a very human level, with the desire for a terrible act of revenge against a former Nazi butcher, including the death of innocent family members. It then turns around and invites the reader to sympathize, if only for a moment and at a very human level, with the desire for vengeance by the son of the former Nazi butcher. Finally, it forces readers to decide what kind of punishment the law itself is entitled to impose. The most "annoying" thing about the book is that it NEVER oversimplifies, on either legal or moral issues. It will really engage readers who are not satisfied with pat solutions, and are willing to learn something about themselves from their own reactions to a very suspenseful told story.

I truly enjoyed this book. It is entertaining and educational.
I could not put it down...

I've read in a long time. Dershowitz writes a book that asks a compelling moral question. The characters in this book are incredibly likeable, and it is amazing the way Dershowitz makes the reader feel compassion for a man who committed horrible and unforgiveable acts years ago. This story portrays two sides of an unthinkable, yet very real, historical tragedy. Does a person have the right to seak revenge on a person who years ago, during the Nazi era, committed unthinkable acts of malice? Read this book and you will be intrigued.

It only took me about three days to read this novel and I can't wait to read more from Dershowitz. What an excellent tale of survival and revenge (the revenge is brilliant!) There is not a slow moment in this book, yet the character shaping never suffers. Dershowitz forces the reader to examine one's own thoughts regarding justice, revenge and qualitative punishment.

Dershowitz, a brilliant legal mind, has written a fast-paced novel. It's interesting to read, but the characters are shallow and he does not explore the issues he raises. He should rewrite the novel under a separate title and develop his characters and the legal and moral issues he glosses over in this book.