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Sojourn (2000)

by Andrew Krivak(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

review 1: This book reminded me a lot of Tinkers by Paul Harding in which men, regardless of politics, religion or borders try to make sense of their place in the world. Both books are beautifully written, this one in particular has long sentences that are poetic without making the overall text hard to read.The Sojourn starts in Leadville, Colorado and Jozef is the lucky infant of immigrant Slovakian parents. After a tragic accident Jozef returns to the Carpathian Mountains with his father and settles in with his adopted brother. Both boys sign up for World War I and are recruited by the Austrians as sharpshooters. Jozef's story is tender and tough. The setting in both the mountains and war torn Europe is well done and the pacing is spot on. And the perspective of the Slovak charact... moreers is interesting.There is a quote on the cover (I can't remember the credit) that compared this to All Quiet on the Western Front and I doubted the comparison. While this has more bidungsroman aspect to it, and a little less coverage of war, the quality of this much lesser known short novel is indeed on par.
review 2: The writing in this book can be riveting at times, although the long sentences vary between clunky and striking. I loved the detail and descriptions of the various landscapes and the relationships between men: father and son, brother and brother, soldier and soldier. However, I didn't care for the structure at all; the beginning opens with the narrator's birth told in third person, and then switches to a first-person recall for the remainder. I thought the mother would have more of an emotional impact on the narrator but was disappointed that she is reduced to a ghost. Zlee was a fantastic character, and while there are wonderful characters and other elements throughout, this book felt like straight-up reporting, as if the narrator was a WWI military journalist instead of a sharpshooter given special assignments or, later, a prisoner of war. I would have liked to have seen the whole story told in third person just to explore more, like the survivor's guilt the narrator eludes to or his attraction to the pregnant girl. Unfortunately, the narrator shares details as a series of chores, hunts and tasks to be carried out. He is far too removed from his own feelings, and wrapping things up as an old man living in America felt very flat. less

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