After This, Darlings, I Am Through Reading About The Holocaust For This Year!!!!!!!!!!

                                 Girls, I am telling you, I must be some kind of glutton for literary punishment.  When "The Kindly Ones" first appeared on these shores, I was intrigued, first by the length, and then by all the controversy.  I knew I had to read it.  As you know, summertime is when I read the large books, so I
started with this one.  When I finished it yesterday, I could not tell you how glad I was.

                                   It is a 975 page first person narrative of a former SS Officer.  The author, Jonathan
Littell, is able to sustain this narrative device, which alone makes for an amazing feat.  And the points made are gotten across, albeit with overkill. Graphic descriptions of every kind of human atrocity perpetrated during this assault on the Jewish people, are mixed with the protagonist's incestuous relationship with his twin sister, sadomasochistic and masturbatory fantasies, the possible murder of his mother and stepfather (though I think "the twins" did it!), and several different accounts of sodomy--including one involving a sausage, and the other a tree branch.  Ouch!!!!!!!!!!  I kid you not.

                                    The scope is panoramic, the text readable, but even as I plowed through, determined to finish, I had to wonder--is all this necessary? Does it need to be this long?  Could the
story of Max Auel have been told in half the length.

                                       Which leads me to wonder about author Jonathan Littell. Gifted, yes, but to what purpose?  Anti-Semitism?  Nazi sympathizing?  For all that his prose seems to want to expose the horrors, it seems at times to actually relish in it, which calls for me into question his intentions and motives for writing this tome.

                                            And to think France gave this its two most prestigious literary awards!!!!!! One publication even called it "a new 'War and Peace'."  Let me tell you, honey, it's not! Far from it!!!!!!!!

                                               The kindest thing I can tell you all to do is to NOT read "The Kindly Ones." But you know me, I just have to do that literary exploring. 

                                                  Meanwhile, I am lightening up with "Under The Lilacs" by Louisa May Alcottt, where everything is pretty, and has a happy ending!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                     Make sure all you girls out there stay pretty!!!!!!!!!!!!