See Under: Love

This book shouldn't hold together as well as it does. So many disparate elements that, to me, shouldn't be attempting to work in cohesion. Child of holocaust survivors/cynical israeli author attempting to write about the holocaust whilst straightening his own life/post modern travails/camp inmate writer going all 1001 and nights on a camp commandant....in a lesser writer's hands this story woulve collapsed into an amorphous mess, falling under the weight ofg tis own ambition. But Grossman succeeds. He details a story that confronts the incomprehensible...and fails. But this failure is part of the mastery. Grossman lays bare so many different facets of holocaust comprehension, the schmaltz, the dire pathos, the shame, the denial, in a show more way i didnt think possible. Some feat. More so than any israeli author ive read (slightly edging out Amos Oz and leagues ahead of Yehoshua) Grossman presents a story that oddly enough is only incidentally israeli and jewish integrally but not primarily, he gives us a story of humanity...exhausting and draining but beautiful in its pain. Read it. show less

I found this a very difficult book, but one that I did not want to stop reading. It's one I would like to re-read. It is set in 4 parts and all are difficult. It takes place in Israel after the Holocaust and portrays the difficulty of writng about the Holocaust. Some was magic realism, which I don't usually tolerate, but this was very well done. One whole section was written as if it were an encyclopedia, stating that we hardly have forms to present the Holocaust. The protagonist is a son of survivors who do not speak of their past. The other main characters are Bruno Shulz and Anshel Wasserman, a survivor.

Jedna z najnáročnejších a súčasne najvýnimočnejších beletristických kníh, ktoré som kedy čítala. Vyžaduje čas, kľud, sústredenie a aj náladu na tému holocaustu, ktorý je tu podaný úplne iným spôsobom, než je bežné - ide skôr o snahu pochopiť, prečo ľudia konali ako konali. Vety častokrát na pol strany sú už len čerešničkou na torte. Ja som si pre lepšie pochopenie niektoré pasáže predčítavala aj nahlas a knihu musela po pár stranách vždy odložiť. Každopádne, po pár rokoch si ju plánujem prečítať znova. Zaslúži si to.

An impossible book to describe but magnificent nevertheless. Grossman's writing is poetical, obtuse, old fashioned and modern all in one novel. Divided into 4 distinct sections with 4 correspondingly distinct voices, See Under: LOVE, follows the life of a child born to Holocaust survivors from childhood into adulthood. It is a blend of magical realism, naturalism, children's stories and even the redemptive nature of getting to know one's enemy. It defies all categorization and description and probably needs to be read at least 3 or 4 times to truly appreciate all the nuance.

A book about family and about history. The way that these are intertwined reveals emotions and events that this reader found riveting. How does one deal with the details of lives that were almost unbearable?

The subject matter of this book, first generation Israeli whose parents escaped the Holocaust, makes for interesting reading. The problem may either be in the translation or the lack of style in the original text. The book reads like one run on sentence, or maybe that is just a stream of consciousness style. It's more like typing than actual writing.

insulso, noioso, palloso fino all'inverosimile, senza capo ne coda e senza una trama. Un puro esercizio affabulatorio che non aggiunge nulla di interessante al panorama del romanzo. Una fatica sprecata degna di migliori cause. Non capisco come l'autore di un romanzo "qualcuno con cui correre" abbia potuto scrivere una cosa simile, forse per puro spiritico narcisistico, non vedo altre motivazioni