Review: Day, By Elie Wiesel

I have now completed my tour through the trilogy that is not a trilogy. Day is the third of Elie Wiesel's books that are named with vague time references. As far as I can tell these books are lumped together because a) they are all written by the same auther, b) they are all about the same subject matter, and c) they do follow life chronologically even if they are not all about the same person growing older. Day is about a middle aged man (?) who has just been in a serious accident and is recovering. It is the symbolic final chapter in what is a loose story of life after concentration camps—the chapter in which our hero (who is different in every book) is struggling for a final time with his images and view of life and death. The accident itself brings this struggle to a head by almost, but not quite, ending his life, and then bringing him into contact with his antithesis: a doctor who loves life completely and without caveat. While I was not a big fan of Dawn, I was able to enjoy Day a little more, if enjoy is the right word for such a dark book.

Book 23 on my way to 52 in 2011

Review: Dawn, by Elie Wiesel

I have seen this book referred to as part of a trilogy, including Night, Dawn, and Day (also sometimes titled The Accident). Night, which I've already read and reviewed, is a memoir, so imagine my surprise at finding that the second book in the "trilogy" is a fiction. That was my first disappointment. The book spans just one night in time as the young man waits for morning, when he will have to kill a British officer in the name of the fight to free Palestine from British rule. During this time he is visited and spoken to by the ghosts of many people from his past. The story might have been fine—the struggle of a young man to come to terms with the sum of his existence—but for the use of trite symbolism and meaningless poetic text. Wiesel's clipped, contemporary writing style is what saved this from being a complete loss for me.

Book number 22 on my way to 52.

Review: Night, by Elie Wiesel

This book cannot truly be reviewed. I've read reviews calling it "poignant" and others calling "touching" while still others have complained either that it did not provide enough information or that it portrayed the inmates as "too much like animals", or too inhuman. Maybe these people failed to realize that this isn't a reference book on concentration camps, nor a literary work of death and survival. This is one man's memoir of a frightful history, the writing is completely human, the subjects drawn as he saw them then. Wiesel's writing is crisp, even terse sometimes, yet the language is poetic even when frightening. The story is told probably as it was lived—in a percussive fashion, jumping from one punctuating moment to the next, and yet it avoids becoming a collection of short anecdotes and remains a cohesive, depressing telling. Because it is a journey into a mind as much as a concentration camp the percussive style is authentic and natural. This book does not warrant a review because it is exactly what it should be, because it can only be exactly as Wiesel would write it.

Book 21 on my way to 52 in 2011