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Die Blüten Der Freiheit (2013)

by Iris Anthony(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

3426199653 (ISBN13: 9783426199657)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Droemer

review 1: This is another of Casey's suggestions. I really liked this book. It was full of complicated moral dilemmas. Decisions had huge consequences that affected everyone in the wake. Each of the 7 characters had a sympathetic back story, even the antagonist. Favorite quotes come from a bit player, Denis, a failed baker's son turned failed soldier, who chooses to return to his home village after finally deciding to exchange his gun for a loaf of bread."Now I understood everything. The lieutenant had thought I had no imagination, but he was wrong. Now I could imagine anyone could be a smuggler, just as anyone could be a soldier. A person didn't have to be wicked to disregard the law, and a person didn't have to wear a uniform to shoot someone. If I had this man arrested a... morend confiscated his lace, then I imagined I would become just like the lieutenant. The lieutenant who had kicked a crutch away from a cripple and left an old woman sprawled in the mud. If I returned with this man to the border, I could imagine exactly what would happen. The lace would end up adorning the lieutenant's own wrists. And how would that be right? That the cruel should be rewarded and the poor mocked?" pg. 276"I had done the right thing: I had done the wrong thing. But the right thing seemed so wrong, and the wrong thing had felt so right. There was no wide chasm between yes and no, between right and wrong. There was just a wide, vast plain, and I did not know how I could live there, in the middle of it, without the absolute certainty offered by either side. It was so much easier when I had thought right and wrong were two separate countries. That there was some warning, some point when one crossed from one to the other." pg. 278"But if the right thing meant obeying the lieutenant, and the wrong thing meant letting a good man go free, then I had done the right wrong thing. Given a choice between being a not-so-good soldier and a not-so-good baker, I would rather live with flour between my fingers than a gun between my hands. Then I could decide for myself; rye or barley. White or brown. An honest choice for honest pay. It would make life so much less confusing." pg. 278
review 2: The Ruins of Lace is a unusual due to the style of writing and the subject matter, yet at the same time it has a plot that draws the reader into the time and place. The setting is in France and Belgium in the 1600s, when the wearing of lace was limited in France, and smuggling of lace became a big business. Each of the characters in the tale are expertly developed in separate chapters, then gradually connected through the progression of their individual circumstances. You know the author is unusually gifted when one of the main characters turns out to be a dog!Anyone who like historical novels, mystery, action or just good writing will enjoy this book. less

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