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Random Acts of Heroic Love review
Mar. 8th, 2011 05:15 pmRandom Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann is one of those books that's been on my wishlist for so long I've forgotten why I put it there in the first place. Then, much like several similar books, it turned up on BookMooch and ended up at the top of my reading pile when I went in search of something more thoughtful to read after too much time with crime-solving cats.
The first couple of pages were very familiar to me and I've been wracking my brain to think of when I might have picked this book up before, but I can't remember. It was really odd to have the feeling of having read something before but not be able to remember any of the details of the story or when I read it. I'm certain I didn't get very far, as the sense of familiarity disappeared after the first chapter, which is even more strange because this time around I found the story very compelling.
The structure of the book reminded me of the film The Constant Gardener. The protagonist's girlfriend is revealed to be dead on page one and, after that, the main narrative splits in two - flashback to when they met, leading up to her death; and moving forwards with the protagonist from that point as he tries to carry on with his life. I found this way of telling the story oddly reassuring - since I already knew the worst had happened, it made the unfolding of the tale much less suspenseful than it would otherwise have been, allowing me to focus on the characters and the emotions expressed, rather than worrying about what was going to happen.
The other strand of the story followed a Polish solider through his experiences of the First World War and as a prisoner of war in Siberia. I was less keen on this narrative - I didn't really like the first person narrator and a lot of what he described was extremely unpleasant.
Despite the fact that the story was about epic love, intense grief and both physical and mental suffering, it left me emotionally unmoved, and yet it still kept me reading and I finished the book in much less time than it's taken me to read other books of a similar length in recent months.
The first couple of pages were very familiar to me and I've been wracking my brain to think of when I might have picked this book up before, but I can't remember. It was really odd to have the feeling of having read something before but not be able to remember any of the details of the story or when I read it. I'm certain I didn't get very far, as the sense of familiarity disappeared after the first chapter, which is even more strange because this time around I found the story very compelling.
The structure of the book reminded me of the film The Constant Gardener. The protagonist's girlfriend is revealed to be dead on page one and, after that, the main narrative splits in two - flashback to when they met, leading up to her death; and moving forwards with the protagonist from that point as he tries to carry on with his life. I found this way of telling the story oddly reassuring - since I already knew the worst had happened, it made the unfolding of the tale much less suspenseful than it would otherwise have been, allowing me to focus on the characters and the emotions expressed, rather than worrying about what was going to happen.
The other strand of the story followed a Polish solider through his experiences of the First World War and as a prisoner of war in Siberia. I was less keen on this narrative - I didn't really like the first person narrator and a lot of what he described was extremely unpleasant.
Despite the fact that the story was about epic love, intense grief and both physical and mental suffering, it left me emotionally unmoved, and yet it still kept me reading and I finished the book in much less time than it's taken me to read other books of a similar length in recent months.
