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The Widow's Daughter: A Novel (2012)

by Nicholas Edlin(Favorite Author)

3.31 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0143120824 (ISBN13: 9780143120827)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Books

review 1: Nicholas Edlin allowed me to appreciate his skill in writing particularly in the first chapters. The book is well laid out and thought out. He paints pictures with his words, not only of the physical world but of the world inside of the characters internal beings. Once you start, you can't put it down, there is mystery all the way through and I loved the character development of each character involved, particularly the main character, Peter. Your heart breaks with him and rejoices in his victories among the difficult circumstances of war love and loss.
review 2: One thing I love about the ALA conference is that I can pick up advanced reading copies from new authors. I picked this book up last week and starting reading in the airport. I haven't read much about ... morethe role of the American forces in New Zealand in World War 11, so this was intriguing. The author, Nicholas Edlin, has good potential and this was a worthy first effort. Edlin tells the story of Peter Sokol, a surgeon turned painter, who served in Aukland and fell in love with a mysterious ingenue with a shadowy past. Edlin is a native New Zealander and his love of the country comes through in his descriptive language. Sokol, traveling to see the author of a book about his New Zealand adventure, tells his story through flashbacks and remembrances, as he converses with a young man that he picks up on the way. The story is intriguing with a mixture of love, mystery, war, and espionage, along with the subplot of Sokol's current road trip. And for me, this was a weakness in the narrative. With so many elements none were fully developed and I never had a real sense of Sokol's character development. His naïveté was just too pervasive on too many levels and I could never develop an empathy or understanding of him. There seemed to be no basis for this wild romance and certainly no rationale for the guilt carried by Sokol through the years. Throughout the story too many characters acted "out of character". Edlin shows promise as an author. I just felt that this book was a little too big for itself. less

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