Max
Sarah Cohen-Scali
Max isn’t born yet. But once he is, he will be the first of his kind – the first of a bred blonde haired, blue eyed Nazi. Self-aware and self-proclaimed as brilliant, this novel follows Max’s growing up in Nazi Germany where he doesn’t know that the Nazi’s are ‘evil’ and knows nothing but his relatively privileged life.
Max’s unique mature mindset makes it possible for the author to expose monstrosities in a matter-of-fact manner that nonetheless touch the reader and leaves them thinking about humans in general. Sometimes it felt like there was too much to absorb.
Something that irritated me about the cover was that there were ‘Two boys, two destinies.’ I spent the first half or so of the novel wondering when the perspective would change to the other boy, but in fact that never happened. The perspective remained with Max, even as his views and understandings changed.
This novel remains readable while also providing insight into an area of Nazi Germany that many people may not know about. It is based around the true story of a facility and breeding project that had been set up in order to breed perfect little Germans who follow the will of Hitler. The beginning of genetics! My favourite!
This novel has been translated from French, and there are no objections here from me. The dialogue and descriptions still flowed seamlessly, and I didn’t even know it was translated until I looked on GoodReads for the cover!
I think I enjoyed Dog Boy (also by Text Publishing), more than I enjoyed this one. While Max was more absorbing (I read it straight through, keeping me up past my bedtime), Dog Boy left me with more to think about. Either way, they are both worth 5 stars.
Normally I couldn’t tell you the names of half the characters, but the advantage of this novel being pretty much from Monica’s perspective (which is limited to dealing with people as she can’t really go out very much) meant that I got a good solid grasp of them in my mind. When the perspective changes up, you still don’t know the whole story or a truth.
If you are squeamish, this isn’t the novel for you. Apart from the part about eyeballs, which is my personal phobia and that I skipped over, I can say the horror was visceral.
I found myself confused at times. I don’t think it was ever explained exactly why Frankie was angry, even though the events surrounding her life were certainly messy. I’m not sure I’m objecting about this, except that perhaps the blurb focusses on that anger too much and not enough on Frankie’s changing life.
I didn’t like the cover, and the synopsis didn’t set me on fire. But I was promised some queer characters, and then I read the first page or so and I was hooked. I got attached to characters too quickly, and then they died! Talk about a masterwork by the author on hooking me in realistically with her character building then just easily killing off my heart.
The whole time, I was on Laura’s side. I couldn’t believe how shallow some people were. But at the same time, I couldn’t believe how stupid Laura was. As if you would let an unknown person unlimited access to your computer! And use the same password for everything. And not have backups!
At times, I felt exactly as David did about his son. Ben couldn’t be dead. It was painfully clear that David’s self-deception as a character came through as an unreliable narrator. This was such powerful writing, and I could feel all of the characters leaping out of their pages like real people.
I could hardly put this novel down, which was surprising because its basically a memoir. I’ve never heard of her though, so it was all new to me. I did enjoy the ‘journey’ right from the beginning of her life.
Where can I start talking about this novel? It arrived, I spotted it, and next thing it was 2 hours later and I still couldn’t put it down. …yes I have problems with being attracted to new books. The pages grabbed me right from the beginning, pulled me in, and kept me reading because things could change at any moment. And of course, I love reading about the training of new and innovative skills.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of