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The Betrayers: A Novel (2014)

by David Bezmozgis(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0316284335 (ISBN13: 9780316284332)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

review 1: Quick, theatrical novel about an Israeli, former Soviet dissident politician and his mistress who go to Yalta and have an accidental encounter, which derails there trip. I just finished the book a few minutes ago and am trying to figure out what I thought. On one hand the writing was very good. The prose was quick and clear. Scenes were set with brevity, but with a lot of feeling. It felt like reading a play in many ways. The story has a very condensed time-frame (two days) and the middle of the book takes place in three spaces in one house. There is only a handful of character. There are coincidences. It may actually make a better play than novel. I think that in many small modern dramas the characters are often bombastic, loud, and stuck with there opinions. You aren't p... morerivy to characters internal thoughts in many plays. You just see there actions and reactions to others. The characters here are like that here. They all feel a bit like exaggerated types of people, not compromising, and lacking empathy. Still overall, I enjoyed the book and was certainly compelled to finish it.
review 2: An Israeli politician, who is a former Soviet dissident and gulag survivor, encounters the informant who denounced him some 40 years earlier. I knew from the first page that I was in the hands of a thoroughly competent writer in the best sense: I could relax and lose myself in the story, knowing I wouldn't be tossed out by a false note. From beginning to end, it was a gem, and I cried at the end, just bawled, even though the narrator's politics aren't mine. That is more than competence, that is enviable craftsmanship. less

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