Customer Reviews

My Darling Elia

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Goretsky lay still, his face a bloody pulp, unrecognizable. The solider swung his boot and kicked the motionless figure. Goretsky's lifeless body flopped like a sawdust doll, then settled facedown into the earth." (p. 30) This is the least detailed sentence I could find in this book. The rest is absoultely graphic and really reaches out to my heart. Elia is the main character and he is one of the few who survived the massacre at Babi Yar, where thousands of Jews were slaughtered by Germans. Elia returns from Babi Yar when he finds Anna, his wife gone. She had gone to another city for their daughter's safety. It is Elia's love for his wife, Anna, that keeps him going despite the winter cold, starvation, injuries and Germans looking for him. Years later when it is all over, Elia tells his story to Liz and Cia who sells objects at a flea market. Elia met them both when he discovered the locket,in a box full of jewerly, that was once a gift to his wife. Liz and Cia set out to find Anna upon Elia's request. Very hopeful book. Throughout the book, I only hoped that Elia would find the one thing he had always loved, Anna. This book has left me pondering about how Elia never once gave up and that showed such great courage, hope, faith and true love for Anna. I would reccomend this book to anyone who seeks truly moving stories.

Many of us have read so many books and tales of experiences from the Holocaust that I seriously wondered if this book would shed any new light on the subjct matter. Well, for me as a reader it certainly did. While I have read many first hand and fictional accounts about the camps and even life after the war, this book did a fine job of describing the early years of WWII and then life on the run and with the Resistance movement. I shed tears when Elia learned of the fate of his beloved and the ending certainly was heart wrenching. I also enjoyed the way the author involved a teenager, who thought she knew everything, into a relationship with Elia which ultimately changed the direction of her life.

I was saddened to read the the author died shortly before the book was published. I would have looked forward to more books by her.

It shows the horrors and kindness that humans do to each other ;keeps you in suspense until the end. Should be read in all highschool or college english classes.

I wouldn't rave about this book, though it was a good read, and the author succeeded in making the wartime experiences of Elia seem very real indeed. In fact for the first 50 pages I thought I was reading a non-fiction book - how I missed the "A Novel" on the cover is beyond me. From the time I discovered this was a novel and not a true story, I lost my enthusiasm for the book. I found the descriptions and details of the Montreal characters unconvincing and trite, especially as they compared to the very good characterization of Elia. Finally, the end was most unsatisfying - I won't go into detail as I don't want to spoil it for others...

I found this book entrancing and difficult to put down. The relentless spirit of Elia is well captured. Characters have both depth and feeling, putting you center stage of the turmoil of their time.

A well structured and easy reading book with an ageless quality similar to Anne Frank.

The story of Elia and Anna follows predictably along, and even Elia's journey to find her through Ukraine and Poland had no hidden surprises. But, some of the descriptions of life in the death camps - of the Jewish workers and their survival of places like Treblinka - were very revealing. I have been to many of the places in the book, have read a lot about the holocaust, but some of the details presented in this book are new, or at least have been described in a new way to me. Buy it used.

I picked up this book after many people recommended it to me. I was sorely disappointed.

The story starts out pretty good. Elia, a holocaust survivor and all around good guy, has come across a locket that he gave to his long-lost wife back during World War II. He's been searching for her for years, and this is the biggest clue he's found yet. The owners of the flea market stand he found it at offer to conduct a search to find the people who they bought it from. Meanwhile, Elia starts telling him his story. The search and the story telling continue over many weeks.

The ending is the real disappointment of this book. It's overly sympathetic and formulaic. It reminds me of a badly written chain email designed to make you examine your own life and how good it is compared to the story of some poor, downtrodden man or woman. I felt almost manipulated. As opposed to a believable, well thought out ending, we're subjected to something that was obviously designed to make the Harlequin romance crowd get teary eyed and introspective. It made me distrust what I considered the good parts of the book - Elia's description of the horrors of the concentration camp. If the ending was an obvious ploy to pull heartstrings, I can't fully trust that the rest of the book wasn't doing the same.

The character development is flat. People are either good or bad, not a great design in a book that at one high point has Elia explaining that the reason he can't blanketly hate all the camp guards is because to hate them would mean he'd have to hate all Germans, and if he hated all Germans he'd have to hate the Poles that helped the Germans, and so on and so forth. The two subplots running through the book seem to be there more for filler than anything else. Why spend several chapters reviewing the history of one particular friend of Elia's? Sure, it's somewhat interesting, but once again I have my suspicions that it was only included to have yet one more sad story for us to cry over.

Overall, I had a very strong bad reaction to this book. I felt ripped off and manipulated. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Heartwrenching story of a young man desparately seeking a love lost during the terrors of war. Is love so great a thing to risk your life over and over and over again? Will they ever be reunited?

I picked this book up on a whim... but couldn't put it down. This book will draw you in, entertain you, and educate you. I found it very close to home as my husband is currently serving over seas in the military. Now our sacrifices seem small in comparison.

Melnyk has done an outstanding job of making you feel like you're there. The characters are exceptionally well developed and the interesting settings of Montreal, combined with the tragedies of war-time Germany and the Holocaust combine to make this a must read. An excellent book that would make a spectacular movie.

I could not put Ms. Melynick's gripping Holocaust novel down. The Horrors of WWII were sugured with a love story and the will to live. I felt as though I took a journey from Russia to Montreal--A must and gripping work of pain and love and suspense.