Schindler's List (original 1982; edition 1994)

I feel like I'm violating an unspoken law, one akin to the actual law against display of the swastika in Germany, by saying this is a bad book. But to be silent about a flawed book because of its subject is worse. I can't believe this badly composed piece won the Booker Prize.

The prose is clumsy. It is littered with unnecessary fragments that chop up the flow without adding the punch or serving any of the purposes a fragment can. Worse, the narrative itself is choppy. I sympathize with the task Thomas Keneally set himself: he wanted to tell a story that should be told, a real story with a factual basis. To respect the facts, he couldn't invent conversations or manipulate the timeline. Yet because the source material is incomplete, he and the witnesses intrude upon the story to say that this is one way it could have happened, or here are three eyewitnesses' versions plus a more likely scenario from a nonwitness who nonetheless knew was was going on. Different people remember different periods, and so characters drop in and then drop out without introduction or conclusion. Even the pre-movie reader knows the gist from the jacket; what the book fails to deliver is thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; also interest. It does deliver mawkishness (though not, in Keneally's defense, anything like Liam Neeson's final speech).

I understand why he couldn't write a history: the fact-checking would have been impossible. Maybe a memoir, whose format allows vagueness, subjectivity, and invention, would have served. But this book, as written, is a bad novel. ( )

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. It did a good job of telling the story of a man who changed the lives of so many, while under their oppressor's noses.

Unfortunately, throughout the book, it would lapse into these "back-story" areas that felt forced... like historical text. I know that is what it is, really, but considering that this book states that it is a "fiction" and a "novel", it shouldn't feel that way, in my opinion.

This book did do a good job at looking at the Nazi occupation, ghettos, and Concentration Camps from the Jewish perspective; how Jewish people ultimately allowed more and more restrictions on their lives in the hopes that cooperation would win them lenience.

I would recommend this book to others; it is definitely worth reading, but was a little dry at times. ( )

own it. $1 today.

This one bridges the gap between reality and fiction in a way matched by few. The circumstances of extraordinary cruelty are only equaled by the unimaginable courage it took to defy it. It's fortunate that the account is written in such a straightforward and clear manner, for the depth of emotion in some of the scenes described is so vast that any obvious attempt of connecting the reader to the emotions would be trivial, if not horribly superficial and presumptive. There need be no high flown words nor creative turns of phrases to convey the grief and gratitude felt by the people within the pages. They have their stories laid out here in an effort to show others what happened in as informative a manner as possible, and if there is emotional output, then the reader is human, nothing more, nothing less. Overall it is the story of the right man at the right time, a happenstance so unlikely and so amazing that fate must be considered, at least for a moment. It should be mentioned that the movie in contrast played heavily on the emotions, a haunting score playing throughout while certain scenes were embellished in order to draw the readers fully into the tragedy of it all. These changes were acceptable in movie form because the aim was towards making a work of art out of a story, whereas the book sought to inform as much as possible. Like every other case of an excellent book made into an excellent film, I recommend experiencing both; the differences between the two are just as valuable as the similarities, and taking the time for both is worth it. ( )

Oskar Schindler was more than a rescuer of Jews; he was a subversive force. He was able to get SS officers to look the other way, able to avoid manufacturing anything of value to the German war effort, able to show other people that there might be a way to at least save some people. It would be hard to overstate what he managed to do. He may have "only" saved a small number of people, but that was more than he could have been reasonably expected to do. He put himself on the line for them in a very real way.

At the same time, the book is so insistent on not sanctifying Schindler that it feels like the author tries very hard to point out Schindler's failings. He was a womanizer, he drank too much, he mostly ignored his wife, he lived as big as his station in life would allow. It's great to acknowledge that he wasn't perfect, but his failings were also part of what made his entire enterprise work. Plying people with food and drink, having long conversations with them even when he abhorred them, letting some heinous things continue - all were part of why he was able to do anything at all. If he'd gone around trying to save everyone, or stopping a camp commandant from beating his maid, the illusion that he was on the Germans' side even slightly (and appearing so slightly is all he could manage) would have disappeared, and his chances to do any good along with it.

It's an interesting story, and an important one. My rating is lower than the book probably deserves, but I wasn't as affected by the story as I expected to be. I think that having toured Dachau two years ago changed my ability to be moved by words written about the Holocaust. Everything pales in comparison to standing there.

Recommended for: anyone and everyone

Quote: "It was fortunate for Abraham that Oskar did not ask himself why it was Bankier's name he called, that he did not pause and consider that Bankier's had only equal value to all the other names loaded aboard the Ostbahn rolling stock. An existentialist might have been defeated by the numbers at Prokocim, stunned by the equal appeal of all names and voices. But Schindler was a philosophic innocent. He knew who he knew. He knew the name of Bankier." ( )