Fiction Book Review

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Book Title

War on the Margins

Score: 24/60

Section 1

Did the story read like a movie?  5
Did you feel involved in the story?   no
Could you identify with the primary characters?  no

Addtional Comments

There are some very nice moments, but overall the characters are flat. The story has great historical basis and is very well-researched, but the historical details trump the characters, story, and continuity almost every time.

Section 2

Was the story compelling enough to keep you turning the pages?  4
Did you find the central theme of the book interesting?   yes
Could you identify the theme early enough to keep your interest?   yes

Addtional Comments

The subject of the Channel Islands during WWII is an interesting subject, and adding Jewish persecution to the mix could have been even more so, but I was constantly distracted and taken out of the moment with too many pages of reproduced documents and government orders and changes in tense. Nice passages of narriative told in an active tense were intercut with pieces that seemed to be from the original thesis written in passive tense.

Section 3

Did you find the primary characters to be believable and interesting?   3
Did they have individual personalities and patterns of diction?   no
Did each have an agenda of their own?   yes
Did those varied agendas provide enough conflict to keep you interested?   no

Addtional Comments

This may be the weakest part of the book, unfortunately. The author asks you to take many parts of the central character, Marlene, on faith with little in the way of explanation. The meticulous construction of the historical world does not extend to the history of the characters, except in the case of the two female resistance fighters, who get an entire chapter that seemed to be written apart from the main story; change of tense, sentence construction, and flow was noticeable. I desperately wanted to care for the characters put into this difficult and trying situation of the German occupation but simply didn't. Also, peppering dialogue with French or English sayings is useful in controlled amounts, but after a while these things should fall to the background as we become comfortable with the characters. This did not happen, as it seemed that the French women seemed to speak in exclamations a great deal of the time.

Section 4

Did you find areas to be appropriately emotional/suspenseful?   4
Did you feel sad or worried/tense or anxious when you should have?   no
Was there skillful build up in the story to create a forward push?   no

Addtional Comments

I saw where the effort was made to create these moments, but often they seemed to come out of nowhere and with little explanation for the character's actions. More set-up and foundation is needed to support the events impacting the characters. Again, the exactness of the historical could have aided the fiction. Things like the destruction of documents, an event that changes Marlene's life, seems impulsive as I was not aware of her precognition of this act. She was anxious about the situation in general, true, but there was nothing presented about her that led me to believe she would consider abandoning her current, very planned life, for one of an outlaw resistance fighter. Also, I'm fairly certain her father's cup sewn into the lining of her jacket would have left a conspicuous bulge.

Section 5

Was this book carefully edited and formatted?   7
Did you find word choices and tone to be appropriate to this book?   yes
Did you find yourself distracted by typos, grammatical an/or punctuation errors or other formatting issues?   no

Addtional Comments

I did wonder about the double space between paragraphs, which had the side-effect of stretching the historical documents over several pages. I didn't mind it except when that happened. Perhaps formatting the historical documents so they are simply reduced versions, shrunken to the page to represent what they may have looked like originally?

Section 6

Would you recommend this book to the reading public?   1

Short Book Review: (300-500 words)

War on the Margins is an interesting book about the German occupation of the Channel Islands, specifically dealing with the Jewish residents. Ms. Cone originally conceived the book as her master's thesis and her knowledge and thorough research is apparent. Details of the environment jump off the page and the social/political events of the time are reinforced through the use of what can be assumed are reproductions of real orders issued by the German occupation. Unfortunately, this is the bulk of the praise. The characters, while initially interesting, don't hold up to extended time with them. Their actions are sometimes sudden and without adequate explanation and occasionally seem irrational and overly dramatic. These were trying times and people were prone to panic, but so many elements seemed over the top that it became exhausting to read. This is a strong start for this story, but in this reviewer's opinion there is much work yet to be done to fully transform it from academic thesis to a compelling work of fiction.