To tell the truth, it's been awhile I wanted to share my opinion on this, but was totally unable to "count" the stars. It's definitely not a one-star book, I think, but sometimes it scarcely rises above two, sometimes it almost reaches five, though. So my four stars is not a very credible evaluation.
Sorry, I can't give an exact quotation of some previous reviewer, but there's a very important point: real life tragedies are not necessarily plausible in a book (like breathtaking real life adventures can be totally boring in a novel). I do my best, but I can't shake off the impression, that the author, losing his own sweetheart years and years ago, remembers her as some kind of idol, hence this ideal love, Leo and Eleni. But, sorry, this flawless love is incredible, uninteresting and sparks zero emotions in a flawed reader like me (I almost switched to Romeo and Juliet......) And when a young man is crying non-stop for the first 20 pages, you feel kind of drowned, wanting to breathe, not to read.
It gets much better with the second storyline, as you can really make an idol of a girl, when you are at war, when you are suffering and separated from her by thousands of kilometers. And the description of Siberian reality in WWI times is credible, something, that does not happen very often to Western writers.
Sadly, but Leo of 1992 is no character at all. I do my best to think what kind of person he is, I try to imagine this man living and breathing. Hmmm....... Puff of empty air. Ah, there's Roberto, much more alive... ditto Hannah. Weird things happen. It seems, that when the author puts too much of himself into the character, or maybe loves him too much, the reader gets a corpse instead of the protagonist.
On the whole, it could have been two good love stories. Unfortunately, tying things together at the end adds a good amount of banality to everything. Maybe it's only my opinion, but I waited for this kind of ending since the moment I found out there are two storylines... and I would have been very pleasantly deceived by the author, had I found none of that. Alas... I could have written this ending myself, so why bother reading?...
On the whole don't get me wrong, this book is worth at least a try. And after some 20 or 30 pages you won't be flooded by torrents of tears that often. |
