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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful read, September 27, 2008
This review is from: Vienna Dolorosa (Perfect Paperback)
A stunning and exemplary work of historical fiction, set in Vienna, Austria, taking place during a single day--March 12, 1938, the day Hitler "invades" Austria--in the Hotel Redl, a brothel where young boys dressed as girls entertain a discreet clientele. The hotel's proprietress, transvestite Friska Bielinska, watches the violence building on the streets of the city and tries valiantly to save guests and workers from the Nazi storm breaking around them.
* * *
Some books are easy to read. You snuggle up with them for a few hours of pleasure, a divertissement; perhaps a thrill or two from the plot, maybe a phrase here or there to savor. For most of us, this is mostly what we read.
Other books are not so easy. They are the ones whose prose, whose authors, challenge us. They dwell on serious subjects, or sometimes, subjects that are difficult to face. They make us think. They make us face, within ourselves, the reality of the human condition; perhaps for better; more often, for worse.
I personally find that certain themes, certain subjects, are difficult for me to read. That is not meant judgmentally. The good writer is, or should be, a student of human behavior. To wrinkle up one's nose at very much of it is to distance yourself from your rightful task. You cannot write about human beings if you do not understand them, and you cannot understand them if you cannot see them honestly.
Still, I am inclined to avoid violence and there are certain types of sexual behavior--sadism, masochism, scatology among them--that turn me off on a personal level. Man's inhumanity to man depresses me. I do not generally read William Burroughs, as an example; he is just not to my tastes. But, this does not mitigate my opinion of him as a writer, a writer whom many consider to be brilliant.
Vienna Dolorosa was, then, not an easy book for me to read, dealing as it does with this one day of violence. But, to review a book, as I see it, is to provide a potential reader, who may not at all share my own prejudices, with some intelligent basis upon which to make his decision, whether to read, or not to read. If I write reviews only of books that reflect my bias, I am producing only a certain kind of vanity writing, and avail the potential reader naught.
I did not savor this book on a personal level. It troubled me greatly, in fact. It puts me, I fear, too closely in touch with my own inner brutality, which is to say, our common human thread of brutality, the seed of which exists in each of us, acknowledged or not. It can be painful to be forced to recognize it. Far easier to shy away from it. Like Burroughs, Mykola Dementiuk holds the mirror insistently before our faces, forces us to look into the darkest corners of our souls. He takes no blame if the image we see is not a rosy one.
This is a book that reminds me, indeed, very much of Burroughs' work, and the writing is certainly brilliant. How could I not admire a writer who captures the reality of the Nazi brutality with such astonishing brevity and horrible clarity: "The time of indecisive slapping was over; the millennium of clenched fists had arrived." Who could make the point in fewer words? What writer could not admire this snippet of bitter humor: "When told about the Nazi book-burning...in Berlin , he was to say, When they start burning the writers, call me; only idiots pay attention to writers."
So, no, this is not an easy book. It is not for the reader seeking an hour or two of gay fluff; nor the prissy; nor the timid. It is not a pretty book. It is, in fact, an ugly one. It is often over the top. One senses here and there the author striving to shock, to dismay, and he does. Horrible would not be too strong a word. Life, the author insists, can be horrible. People can be horrible.
But they can be beautiful, too, and for all of his shock tactics, the author finds too, here and there, little redeeming gems of beauty, of courage and goodness, even of love, buried in this momentary dung heap of history.
This is in fact a beautiful novel, beautifully realized, a novel for those interested in history--not just history's glorious triumphs, but its sometimes putrid underbelly as well. It is for those interested in the human condition, for it is in just such chapters of history that one sees humankind stripped of pretense, exposed, raw nerve endings and all. And, certainly, it is a novel for those interested in literature more than mere fiction.
In the best of all literary worlds, this would have been published by one of the major publishing houses, hailed by the leading critics, the author assuming a place in the front ranks of authordom. Stephen Spielberg would be filming it at this very moment.
One can only be grateful for the courage and insight of this small press and its publisher in bringing this extraordinary novel to fruition, for what will sadly almost certainly prove to be a small--but a discerning--audience.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant But Not Easy, December 15, 2008
This review is from: Vienna Dolorosa (Perfect Paperback)
I've lived all my life in Tornado Alley. Hundreds of times I've felt the heavy oppression of motionless air, watched greenish-black clouds pile up on the horizon, and known that something terrible, beyond my control, was developing. Vienna Dolorosa levied the same sense of foreboding.
The story takes place in a single day in 1938, at various locations in Vienna on the last day before the Nazi takeover. The majority of the action occurs in the Hotel Redl, a down-at-heels hotel saved from complete failure by the advent of an intriguing, intelligent creature named Friska Bielinska. But Friska is not quite what she appears to be, and neither is the Hotel Redl. The Redl has tourist rooms but it also has a secret: it's a brothel for men who like boys dressed as girls.
The story is told through the denizens of the hotel/brothel. These people include a brown-shirted Nazi official who becomes the victim of the most hideously vicious attack you will ever read, something for which I was as unprepared as he was. There is a street urchin named Petya who is a survivor of poverty and abuse, who sells himself to live. Petya is clever, tough, and surprisingly sweet. Another is a buxom hotel maid who likes women though she delights in teasing men. Others are: the owner of the hotel, an aging dandy, and a Jewish tourist couple. Most of all there is Friska.
Friska is slim, attractive, and feminine in her manners and attire. Adversity in her own life has made her compassionate, someone who cares about people, whether they are customers or her boy/girls. And she is a he. Friska is referred to throughout as "she" because, as we would say today, she identifies as a woman. If the story had been set in the 21st century instead of 1938 I suspect the author would have made her transgendered instead of a transvestite.
Most of the action is appallingly brutal, and much of it is carried out either by Nazis or with the approval of Nazi officials, including the arrest and horrific punishment of one of their own caught with another man. The villains are monstrous but identifiably human--the policemen carrying out punishments, the SS, the soldiers, the citizens who turn upon anyone who is or appears to be different, or who simply has angered them for some reason. The major players are complex, especially the noble-spirited Friska, and Petya, whom you want to rescue and protect.
Vienna Dolorosa has been denounced as pornographic, but pornography is intended to titillate and arouse; anybody who gets aroused by the events in Vienna Dolorosa has a serious problem. It's true there is an overwhelming amount of graphic sex and graphic violence of every description but each incident builds the story brick by horrifying brick. It is said that truth is in the eye of the beholder; the author puts faces on the faceless victims of violence and forces you to behold. There are no funny, fat, stupid Sgt. Schultzes among Dementiuk's Nazis, and no happy endings.
The narration is very good, written with a wonderful eye for detail. Sometimes it is intrusive and takes the reader out of the moment (on the other hand, perhaps that is a kindness!) However, except for the intrusiveness, I find the historic narration to be a clear and passionate commentary on one momentous 24-hour period and what led to it.
I have only a few quibbles, which are as follow.
The characters of the incestuous father and pregnant teenage daughter are extraneous. They didn't really add anything to the story that I could see, and they clogged an already large cast.
Two situations struck a jarring chord. The gang-raped woman has orgasms with each rapist and her reaction and movements afterward are unrealistic. The same applies to the young girl who gives birth. Though the birth and death of her baby are dreadful in its graphicness, the follow-up is unrealistic and unconvincing. Rape is traumatic, physically and mentally. Childbirth is painful for grown women, let alone a simpleminded young girl who doesn't understand what is happening. Yet other than superficially, neither the young woman who was raped nor the victimized girl seem to be much affected once it's over.
I also feel that Kurt's ultimate fate, about halfway through the story, goes way over the line of gratuitous violence. In my opinion the horror could have been effectively stopped with the surgical scene, which was sickening enough. The story didn't need the additional assault, which stopped my reading for several days. (I won't detail more than that because I don't want to create a spoiler.)
But all that aside, it is a truly remarkable book. I recommend Vienna Dolorosa with the following caveats. DON'T read this book if you have a weak stomach, are faint of heart, or are offended by "alternate lifestyles". DON'T read it if you are looking for escapism because there is no escape in this book, not for the characters and not for the reader. On the other hand, if you can read historical accounts of hatred, genocide, and atrocities, if you want to read an extremely disturbing but unforgettable book, you should read Vienna Dolorosa. Just take it in short doses.
Ruth Sims
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Unapologetic, honest, and important, August 1, 2011
This review is from: Vienna Dolorosa (Perfect Paperback)
Mick's writing is as unapologetic as it is honest, presenting us with people who are, for better or worse, simply living their lives, as opposed to characters playing a narrative role. As you might expect from Mick's work, the characters in his novel are not exactly those to welcome a visit from the Fuehrer's regime with open arms. Frau Friska is a transvestite hotel manager who has already fled one wave of oppression, finding a new home in Vienna. Petya is one of the young transvestite prostitutes who work her back rooms, while Kaufmann is a degenerate old man who (literally) loved one of Petya's fellow 'girls' to death. Wanda is an ample bosomed lesbian who, despite her disgust with men, loves to flaunt herself for their attention, while Kurt is an oh-so-serious young man with the impossible task of reconciling his homosexuality with his support for the Nazi cause.
None of the characters here are perfect (although Frau Friska and Petya are certainly worthy of our respect), and some are downright distasteful (Kaufmann elicits some sympathy, but the hotel guest who takes incestuous advantage of his daughter does not), but it's clear that none of them deserve the cruelties descending upon them. At lot of the violence does happen off the page, but there are notable exceptions (such as the castration of poor, conflicted Kurt) that are so physically and emotionally powerful that you need to put the book down and walk away for a bit.
This is a book that's entirely too sad, deeply depressing, and almost entirely without hope - and, considering the historical context, that's precisely as it should be. While we may want happy endings for many of these characters, we are painfully aware of the fact that such hopes are entirely unrealistic. A chosen few do make it through the end of the book, but to what fate we will never know. As difficult a read as it may be, however, this is an important book. While the themes of religious/social/cultural discrimination during the Nazi era have been explored quite thoroughly, those of gender/sexual discrimination are more often hinted at than brought into the open. Mick has chosen to tackle a tough subject here, and he does so thoughtfully and honestly.
It's been said often enough that history is doomed to repeat itself, which is precisely why we need people like Mick to keep reminding us of why that must never happen.
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