Photo: hardcover from the book's Goodreads page
Oh. My. God.
There's really no other way to review it. What can you say? It's impossible for one little boy to have been through all this and to survive this, so I'm compelled to agree with the consensus that this is not autobiography, not even biography, and Kosinski was indeed a fraud for saying so.
But like most of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, so much of this could be true, especially (again like Frey's book) in character composite, that it feels true, rings true, and--understood as allegory--certainly reads true. No little boy could possibly be beaten this many times, so savagely, or have seen so much brutality and savagery, so many murders and rapes by every type of person...No little boy can live the life of a Hieronymous Bosch painting and survive it, physically or mentally.
And yet people did. As a mirror to the Holocaust, this rings remarkably and horrifyingly true. And people survived this brutal murder-and-rape life in the Middle Ages, too--Reading this was like reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, picked up and plopped into Eastern Europe, 1939-1945. Really, that's a good comparison: a lot of Bosch, a lot of the Holocaust and a lot of the brutal Middle Ages, all stirred together.
It doesn't matter to me who wrote this--and it's pretty clear, I guess, that Kosinski didn't. If he did, he wrote it in Polish and it was translated. It doesn't matter. It exists, and the writing is staggeringly uniform. There are maybe twelve lines of dialogue in all its pages. The sentences are simple and detached, with a smattering of social observance thrown in, especially when detailing the trains bringing the Holocaust's victims to the camps. Someone wrote it, and it's important that someone did. This is a book that serious readers should read--and don't feel guilty if you can't make your way through it all. It is brutal. But has someone lived like this? Yes. A great many, sadly. And a great many animals have lived like this, too.
It is as brutal a look at humanity as you will likely see. And it is not untrue in of itself, even if it was for Kosinski personally. It is unflinching and unsparing. It will make you grateful for your days, for your loved ones, for life itself. You will maybe be more empathetic. This book, like all great literature, could change your outlook of the world, of people. It may, it may not, but it could, and that's rare in literature, in movies, in any segment of real life. For this it should be read and reveled.
Photo: the paperback's cover, from it's Goodreads page
Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis is a very good book, #4 in the series, that was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2011. The mystery involves a few decapitated men, all in one way or another seen as enemies of Vienna Jews--the last one also being Jewish himself. There are the typical cast of characters, all of whom seem guilty in some way, until the real murderer shows himself towards the end. Max Liebermann gets out of that mess, solves the crime, solves a male patient's pseudo-pregnancy, and walks out of a meeting with his job--in that order. Once again, Tallis seems to show that the crime is second-fiddle compared to the more normal things his character has to go through.
But the real purpose of this book, as with the first three and the following two (I don't know why I've read them out of order, but it's not proven to be a problem), is to show the growing anti-Semitic dissension in 1903 Vienna. The subject is integral to the plot, to the characters, to everything. The book ends with the sadly ironic statement: "Today, Jews may be insulted and abused, but they will never be consigned to the flames again." This was supposedly written in Dr. Liebermann's journal in Vienna, 1903. Hitler, who was born in Austria on April 20, 1889, and who spent time in Vienna, was 14. Since he moved to Germany in 1913, he could plausibly have been a part of Liebermann's 1903 Vienna, but Tallis apparently decided--wisely--not to go there. But the irony of that sentence is impossible to miss.
I've harped on this before, in my other Tallis / Liebermann reviews, and Tallis himself has harped on this in every single Liebermann book, but I'll harp on it again: These books were written long before this last year's election cycle, but the warning is not subtle:
Beware of the makeup of your society, and beware who rules that society.
A country's leader is a reflection of that society, not the other way around.
A woman-hater, for example, cannot succeed in a society otherwise void of woman-haters. A xenophobe who fears / hates Mexicans cannot succeed in a society that does not otherwise fear / hate Mexicans. Though such an aspiring leader may lose an election by garnering "only" 30% to 40% of the vote, such a percentage is still alarmingly high and must be seriously addressed by that society. Simply put, that's a lot of fear and hate. Even if that aspiring leader goes away, the fear and hate-mongering that he flamed will not. It'll be there, and it could, and probably would, get worse.
It's happened before. Europe, 1890-1945. Spain and England have had Jewish purges. America has had a Native American purge. Think about it: If the current aspirant could wipe out those he hated, would he? Even his allies would say Yes. (In fact, that may be why they're his allies.)
So watch out. Beware of the makeup of your society, and beware who rules that society.
This book shows that was true in 1903 Vienna, and it shows it's true in 2016 America.
Beware. Keep your eyes open.
