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Title: HHhH
Author: Laurent Binet
Number of pages: 336
Genre: historical
Book Number/Goal: 5/52
My Rating: 2/5
Review:
A factual account of the Operation Anthropoid (assassination of Reinhard Heydrich) with a fair bit of history leading to it, including (a kind of) Heydrich's biography. But actually, it's a book about the author writing a book! Short historical snippets are interspersed with the author rambling about his girlfriend, drinks, favorite movies, how he'd write the previous chapter if he were somebody else, why did he write it the way he did, what's his opinion on the characters, blah blah blah. If it sounds like fun - it is NOT. It's intrusive, annoying and distracting. The author's mind-dump belongs to the footnotes, to the afterword or to a blog. One has to be incredibly conceited to justify this kind of self-insertion within a historical genre. Oh and in the best fanfiction traditions, most of the writing is in present tense.
Otherwise, there are a few semi-fictional scenes with cute descriptive details, but mostly the regular "those atrocious Nazis" stuff. The author confesses that he's fascinated by the story and even that Heydrich impresses him, but he doesn't really act upon it. But then, the most fascinating person for the author is apparently himself.
Author: Laurent Binet
Number of pages: 336
Genre: historical
Book Number/Goal: 5/52
My Rating: 2/5
Review:
A factual account of the Operation Anthropoid (assassination of Reinhard Heydrich) with a fair bit of history leading to it, including (a kind of) Heydrich's biography. But actually, it's a book about the author writing a book! Short historical snippets are interspersed with the author rambling about his girlfriend, drinks, favorite movies, how he'd write the previous chapter if he were somebody else, why did he write it the way he did, what's his opinion on the characters, blah blah blah. If it sounds like fun - it is NOT. It's intrusive, annoying and distracting. The author's mind-dump belongs to the footnotes, to the afterword or to a blog. One has to be incredibly conceited to justify this kind of self-insertion within a historical genre. Oh and in the best fanfiction traditions, most of the writing is in present tense.
Otherwise, there are a few semi-fictional scenes with cute descriptive details, but mostly the regular "those atrocious Nazis" stuff. The author confesses that he's fascinated by the story and even that Heydrich impresses him, but he doesn't really act upon it. But then, the most fascinating person for the author is apparently himself.
