War and Turpentine
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
Shortly before his death in 1981, Stefan Hertmans' grandfather gave him a couple of filled exercise books. Stories he'd heard as a child had led Hertmans to suspect that their contents might be disturbing, and for years he didn’t dare to open them. When he finally did, he discovered unexpected secrets. His grandfather’s life was marked by years of childhood poverty in late-nineteenth-century Belgium, by horrific experiences on the frontlines during the First World War and by the loss of the young love of his life. He sublimated his grief in the silence of painting. Drawing on these diary entries, his childhood memories and the stories told within Urbain's paintings, Hertmans has produced a poetic novelisation of his grandfather's story, brought to life with great imaginative power and vivid detail. War and Turpentine is an enthralling search for a life that coincided with the tragedy of a century—and a posthumous, almost mythical attempt to give that life a voice at last.
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Belgium Book around the World.
This one was rough. My book around the world challenge is rough. Writing about war and super traumatic things is hard. It's hard because even no one wants to relive that and feel connected to it as they relive it to write it on the page. Even this guys grandpa who wrote a diary just kinda of wrote facts throughout the years. It's not like he seemed to pour his heart out into the diary.
With that being said, I have a very hard time connecting with these types of stories. They're sad, yes. They make me think about big things like what we do to other humans/ourselves, yes. But as far as novel quality? It's just not good.
Overall, I'm missing the emotional connection and there is just a lot of telling without feeling close to the characters.
