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Ignorance (2012)

by Michèle Roberts(Favorite Author)

3.11 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1408816008 (ISBN13: 9781408816004)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury

review 1: The story of two girls growing up in a small town in France during WWII. They attend the same convent school despite being from two very different backgrounds, and their paths through life and through the war diverge even further. A novel about the difficult moral choices people made during the Occupation, and about the lack of any black and white certainty in such times. No one is completely innocent and some who are complicit with the Nazis are not clearly evil either. This is a complicated and intricate novel which I would recommend to anyone interested in everyday life in occupied France, or just fascinated by the varieties of human nature.
review 2: The book is well written, the prose beautiful in demonstrating the characters' strident ignorance during the... moreir efforts to survive the war and assessing goals or achievements, their own or those of others. Yet key sections - Dolly, in particular and the potential parallels between the two protagonists, Jeanne and Marie Angele, and the two nuns, Dolly and Mother Lucie - were too opaque. Several characters could have been more developed. Despite the convent setting, religion's potential for ensuring broader compassion or combatting ignorance, or not, was remote in the book. Helping others was an impulse. Morality and values hinged on life before or after the war. In sum, the book missed many opportunities for what could have been a more intriguing plot. less

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