A Meal in Winter is a novella following three Nazi soldiers, Bauer, Emmerich, and the unnamed narrator, in the midst of the Holocaust living on an army camp in rural Poland. To avoid being forced to shoot and kill captured Jews they go out on patrol searching for Jews hiding in the surrounding countryside and forest. Mingarelli paints a picture of a cold, brutal landscape that seems fitting considering the horrendous nature of what the characters are forced into doing. However, the rest of the book was lacking.
I can easily see how this book would not be to everyone's taste. The story has a unique twist- it tells the story of the many different ways the protagonist's life could have unfolded based upon her own choices, the choices of others around her, impulsive decisions, the mood she is in when certain events happen, and simply pure fate. The way in which the book is written results in scenes being repeated, although usually from a different perspective and often with a different outcome. I quite liked the way in which the book was written, and found it a refreshing change from the norm.
Life After Life follows Ursula, who is born during a blizzard in 1910 into a well-off family living outside London. She experiences WWI as a child and WWII as an adult. She dies many times, only to be "reborn" at various points in her life just prior to a critical junction in time wherein she takes an alternate path to the one chosen prior.
The Orchardist follows the life of Talmadge, a man who moved to central Washington as a young boy and has built a life after the death of his mother and disappearance of his sister tending an apple orchard. He lives a solitary life isolated from most of society apart from a few close friends. However when Jane and Della, two pregnant young teenagers, arrive at the orchard, his quiet peaceful life is permanently altered.
I need to give credit where credit is due, because this book is generally very well written. However, while many seem to be able to move past their distaste for David Lurie, the main character, I found him endlessly tiring.
David Lurie is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, pretentious, creepy, manipulative rapist. He is a white middle-aged man in post-Apartheid South Africa, a professor who considers himself better than nearly everyone around him, treats women with contempt, and uses his deluded perception of himself as a student of romantic poetry and "a servant of Eros" as an excuse for his behaviour. After two failed marriages he regularly manipulates attractive tourists or the occasional co-worker into sleeping with him between his weekly visits to a prostitute (that is, until he stalks her and her family, causing her to flee in fear).
