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Title: Twilight : A Novel by Elie Wiesel ISBN: 0-8052-1058-X Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 07 November, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: In search of the Savior
Comment: This was a difficult book to rate. It is, to begin with, a fairly short novel; just over 200 pages. I felt one of the problems with this book was that the author moved us around too much in time, place and character. The brevity of the book made this confusing. We're one place then another before we got settled in with the former. The basic plot of the book is challenging but worth the effort to try and follow. A doctor (Raphael)who was a youthful survivor of the Holocaust is trying to come to understand his experiences. Through him we meet a wide array of characters of whom the most important is a man nicknamed Pedro. Raphael is in a search for Pedro and for meaning to the horrors that are beyond meaning. There is an irony in the duality of his search. On one level Raphael searches for a real savior that he has lost. On the other level, he searches for the savior that was never there. In the end he encounters both. We are left unfulfilled. Having gone this far with him, we expect more. We want a clear answer, a happy ending. We get neither and, in this ambiguity, we get a sense of Holocaust reality; there is no meaning, there is no happy ending. Night represents evil, day represents good. In the twilight lies the madness.
Rating: 4
Summary: Insanity or Love?
Comment: Twilight seeks to explore the relationship between God and his creation in the context of a mental assylum whereby the accusation of God's insanity in the wake of the Holocaust is juxta-opposed against God's care. The book is filled with wonderful characters in the assylum who 'double' in their insanity as characters from Hebrew Scripture - Adam, Joseph, Cain, Abraham, the Messiah and God. The book is somewhat complicated in that the deepest questions concerning the nature of God and humanity are explored while historic 'flash backs' break up the intensity to tell the real struggle of the main character and his family under the Nazi regime. The book is written with an intense passion and stimulates emotions and arguments and insights concerning God's relationship to humanity in the light of the holocaust from all angles. God is seen as omni-present but veiled, simultaneously imminant and transcendent. Many times the question WHY? is thrown at God and options of God's insanity, cruelty, indifference and usury are expressed. Finally, the accusation of God's insanity in relation to the hohlocaust is defended through the patient who beleives himself to be God - 'When exactly was I suppose to stop it? Go on, tell me'
The novel evokes sympathy for God as a concluding note and in the face of anger and accusation because of the holocaust we are left with an unveiled God in tears and pain through the accusation 'you could have stopped it - you should have stopped it'.
This is a short novel the weaves a masterful tapestry of emotions, history, theology, accusation and theodicy. It's setting in a clinic is unique, the patients are loveable, understandable. Wiesel leads the reader to be on everyone's side, in everyone's shoes. A stunning novel - well worth coming to terms with and reading over and over again.
Rating: 4
Summary: Not as Perplexing as kex86 found it!
Comment: This was my 1st Wiesel work and I did not find it to be "perplexing" or "weird". Actually, I found it to be a quite sane story depicting one of the 20th centuries' most perplexing events.
For readers who have thought previously about the various shades of madness and those who find themselves afflicted (Robert Persig's 'Lila' as an example) and for readers who have spent any time reflecting on the inexcapable impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their next generation...then 'Twilight' is a mystical and brutally real novel depicting the terror of just one family out of the countless thousands.
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Title: The Accident by Elie Wiesel ISBN: 0553581708 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 September, 1982 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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