Book Review: Unbroken

o_O What an absolutely amazing book. O_o

(Yes, I do synchronize my pop-eyed awe faces, thank you very much!)

It's been on my to-read list for a...while and finally got around to reading it due to book club.

Quickies

5 out of 5

Recommended for: Readers 16+ (intense brutality, some mature incidents, language)

Categories: biography, highly recommended literature, couldn't-put-it-down

Synopsis
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini.  In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails.  As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.  But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Review

This is a biography, so I'm not going to go all out for a review. I will say, however, that Laura Hillenbrand has written an excellent narrative.

I am not generally a lover of reality when it comes to books. Reality as in the sense that what I'm reading really happened. I don't know - it usually bores me and I can't stand all those little numbers scattered around that tell you to go to the back so that they can credit a source or give more information or what have you. 

But I almost felt as if I was reading a novel here. I found myself irritated at the author for not giving her characters a little more help until I remembered that they weren't hers - they were real - and she could do nothing but tell the story the way it happened. It's so intense that when I brought it with me to a five-hour work period and read it almost the entire time, I had to take a break and walk around to get my head back into the present. 

Unbroken is brilliantly written. It's a narrative. It's captivating. The story is intensely brutal (to the point where you become unable to absorb the cruelty and just read it because it's there) but there's also so much humor and hope. The uncrushable, indomitable strength of the human spirit. 

You have to read it to understand. 

And, good mercy, can she use adjectives and verbs!

Till next time,