The Mistress

I signed up for the War Through The Generations 2009 Challenge at the beginning of the year, figuring that it would be easy to read six books about World War II. When I went back earlier this month to see if I could manage to pull this off before the end of the year, I realized that I read four books (see list below). That left two books to read. I had wanted to read The Diary of Anne Frank, but I wanted to be realistic about reading another book as well. One of the books I picked up this year through PaperBack Swap was The Mistress. At 186 pages, I was certain I could breeze through, leaving plenty of time to read Anne Frank. In the end, I never made it past page 56. I had difficulty following the story for several reasons: The writing show more is choppy, the narration or at least focus shifts frequently (for example, the Emile is either referred to by name, as the doctor, or, by the narrator, as his grandfather), and sections seem to be missing altogether because I could barely follow along with a simple conversation. The summary sounded so promising, but I couldn’t continue in hopes of what might come. It isn’t often that I do not finish a novel, at least not without skimming my way to the end. This novel was nearly incomprehensible word for word, there was no point in trying to skim.

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