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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but Should Have Been Great,
By
This review is from: Widows: A Novel (Paperback)
This story takes place in an unnamed Greek village during WW2. The men of this village, (who presumably resisted the Nazis and their local collaborators) have been arrested or otherwise disappeared. Disfigured and unidentifiable bodies wash up on the shore of the river where the women wash clothes. The women follow the lead of Sofia Angelos, claiming the bodies are their spouses and pushing the military officer in charge of "pacifying" their village for a decent family burial.The European Nazi setting was chosen in hopes that this book would pass censors and be available in Pinochet's Chile, the actual setting envisioned by the author. For further disguise, there was to be an original European (Danish? French?) publication and a later Spanish translation by a prominent South American writer. The book does not live up to its idea. Too much is vague, unclear or, for its length, extraneous. First, the switch from third to a first person (and back again) seemed to be unnecessary styling; Figuring out the identity of the first person narrator was distracting. In proportion to the short text, there was too much time spent on Emmanuel and his girlfriend, and they (particularly she) are not that germane to the story. The final meeting of Sofia (Grandma) and the Captain and the thoughts (a jumble of maybe thought and thought dialog between Alexis and his Grandmother) are sketchy. Sofia says her husband wasn't involved in politics. It doesn't ring true, but there are only vague clues as to why the men of this town were targets for the authorities. The gap between Chapters 7 and 8 is disappointing and makes for a unsatisfyingly vague ending. The idea is very good. Some of the dialogs such as the Captain and the priest, the Captain and the journalist, the trial, Yanina defending Serguei to Sofia, and Emmanuel describing his talk with his mentor are excellent and you can see how this has been brought to the stage. There are glimpses of character, such as that of Father Gabriel, the Angelos family, the Captain and the landowner Kastoria that illustrate the forces at work in an occupation. This could be a very powerful work because it has many good elements, but I see this novel as a missed opportunity.
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