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spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘Leonard promised. To escape from hell he promised everything.’
We are all endowed with a survival instinct whose gears whir up at the borderlines of life and death and bestow blinders on our rationality to keep the goal of survival-at-all-costs the only clear victory. Jakov Lind’s superb short story collection Soul of Wood examines morality through it’s ugly and sinister negation, delivering seven sadistic and deeply allegorical stories following those who trade morality to prolong their mortality. These are unflinching stories bearing shadows of the holocaust and the only comfort therein is the dark humor that keeps you laughing through the onslaught of degradation, a laughter that sounds strangely like the creaking and cracking of a soul in a storm. With a biting wit=and wild prose that exemplifies the untamed and savage human heart, Lind’s vivid imaginative vision has the reader running like cockroaches into the dark recesses of humanity to survive in an untamed realm where the sunshine of morality can’t be counted on to light the way.
Jakov Lind has a style all of his own that makes Soul of Wood all the more haunting and surreal. He trains his eye on the darkness of reality, yet adds fleeting textures of magical-realism that gives the journey a feel like being in the deep, dark woods of fairy-tales; is it purely the horrors of imagination lurking in the shadows or is there something inexplicable afoot summoned from hell by the evils of Man. Populated by a cast of characters ranging through Nazis, priest, cannibals and convicted killers, and powered by allegorical moral undercurrents, Lind has created what almost feels like a Grimm’s collection of the World War II era. His writing style is also reflective of the human wilderness, keeping his prose sly and dodgy like a man on the run. His dialogue is particularly interesting, containing multiple character's speech and interior monologues within the larger paragraph of ideas without use of quotation marks as guide-posts to separate them. It is slightly stylistically different yet thematically similar to the way [a:José Saramago|1285555|José Saramago|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1404504687p2/1285555.jpg] uses dialogue to tie characters to the natural world and emphasize the discombobulation of reality. A perfect example of Lind’s flair can be seen here, a paragraph concerning a man convincing a taxi driver to take him and his large crate which secretly contains a young jewish boy whom he is charged with hiding:
‘See, he shouted, you’ve made an ass of yourself for life. Look who wants to live.’
World War II brought horrors all across Europe, affecting all and leaving the scars of survival in the hearts and souls of those who made it through to the other side. The title-novella, a near perfect story that makes the book worth reading alone, satirizes the will to live for those caught in the wars clutches. Crippled veteran Wolbrecht finds any method to survive wherever he can, even working as a double agent between two rival doctors at the insane asylum in which he is placed. The two Nazi doctors spend the war putting inmates to death to meet their high daily quota of injections, and plotting ways to find themselves holding the syringe against the arm of the other. As the war is drawing to a close, they set aside their differences and team up to find the Jewish boy Wolbrecht hid in the mountains years before in hopes that protecting one will save them from execution after the inevitable war trials. Survival, it seems, comes before any sense of right and wrong. They are willing to betray their fellow man when doing so keeps them in good favor, washing their hands of murder in the name of duty, and their act of saving someone is not an expression of goodwill but simple survival. They are even willing to kill in order to save. In the story Ressurection, two men live like rats in a tiny space within a wall to escape the Nazis, showing the amazing feats a human is capable of in order to survive.
Lind asks us what use is survival, what good is life? in a world where such unspeakable horrors can be held as commonplace.
Religion figures prominently into many of these stories, and often in unique and surprising ways. There are many theological discussions between characters that are revealing into their hearts. In The Pious Brother, a darkly humorous story featuring an attractive young actress who can only achieve sexual gratification by seducing priests, an aging German Princess expresses her disgust at the common depictions of Jesus.
Highly original and darkly allegorical, Jakov Lind’s stories are an absolute delight. The themes are similar to those found in his intensely amazing [b:Landscape in Concrete|6162860|Landscape in Concrete|Jakov Lind|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1392868722s/6162860.jpg|6342058], yet the multiple stories allow Lind to assess the ideas for a wider ranging array of perspectives. The title-novella is one of the best stories I have read in a long time and has a startling and stunning conclusion that won’t soon be forgotten. This collection is powerful and disturbing, yet sooths with a humor that makes you laugh aloud, yet then wonder about your own morality if such notions can be regarded as funny. This is a perfect collection and one best suited for those who wish to stare into the abyss, for when the abyss stares back all you can do is laugh and laugh and laugh.
5/5
‘I’ve got to eat you. In the first place I’m hungry, and in the second place I like you. I told you right off that I like you and you thought, the guy is queer. But now you know. I’m a simple cannibal. It’s not a profession, it’s a need.’
We are all endowed with a survival instinct whose gears whir up at the borderlines of life and death and bestow blinders on our rationality to keep the goal of survival-at-all-costs the only clear victory. Jakov Lind’s superb short story collection Soul of Wood examines morality through it’s ugly and sinister negation, delivering seven sadistic and deeply allegorical stories following those who trade morality to prolong their mortality. These are unflinching stories bearing shadows of the holocaust and the only comfort therein is the dark humor that keeps you laughing through the onslaught of degradation, a laughter that sounds strangely like the creaking and cracking of a soul in a storm. With a biting wit=and wild prose that exemplifies the untamed and savage human heart, Lind’s vivid imaginative vision has the reader running like cockroaches into the dark recesses of humanity to survive in an untamed realm where the sunshine of morality can’t be counted on to light the way.
Jakov Lind has a style all of his own that makes Soul of Wood all the more haunting and surreal. He trains his eye on the darkness of reality, yet adds fleeting textures of magical-realism that gives the journey a feel like being in the deep, dark woods of fairy-tales; is it purely the horrors of imagination lurking in the shadows or is there something inexplicable afoot summoned from hell by the evils of Man. Populated by a cast of characters ranging through Nazis, priest, cannibals and convicted killers, and powered by allegorical moral undercurrents, Lind has created what almost feels like a Grimm’s collection of the World War II era. His writing style is also reflective of the human wilderness, keeping his prose sly and dodgy like a man on the run. His dialogue is particularly interesting, containing multiple character's speech and interior monologues within the larger paragraph of ideas without use of quotation marks as guide-posts to separate them. It is slightly stylistically different yet thematically similar to the way [a:José Saramago|1285555|José Saramago|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1404504687p2/1285555.jpg] uses dialogue to tie characters to the natural world and emphasize the discombobulation of reality. A perfect example of Lind’s flair can be seen here, a paragraph concerning a man convincing a taxi driver to take him and his large crate which secretly contains a young jewish boy whom he is charged with hiding:
What you got in the crate? shouted the driver into the mirror. Wohlbrecht’s first impulse was to tell him to go to hell, but foresight is better that hindsight. If I say dishes, Wohlbrecht reflected, he’s the kind to get suspicious...it’s the innocent things that make people suspicious. My mother-in-law cut up in little pieces! The driver grinned. That old cripple is O.K. He decided to come down to twenty-five marks. You killed her first, I hope? You think I’m crazy? Wohlbrecht called back. Too much like work. I did it the other way. The driver laughed till his teeth almost fell out of his mouth. I can’t ask him for more than twenty. What a character. Live and let live, that was the driver’s motto…Lind contains everything into one block of an idea, forcing the reader to swallow a heightened emotional punch rather than sustaining it across line breaks. It also reveals Lind’s ability to deftly sashay between perspectives, threading in and out of multiple characters points-of-view in order to pull everything together in an impressive manner. His ability to present all perspectives—from character’s to the authorial—without denoting them as such with punctuation removes all boundaries and makes his stories not about one person but all people and the world around them.
‘See, he shouted, you’ve made an ass of yourself for life. Look who wants to live.’
World War II brought horrors all across Europe, affecting all and leaving the scars of survival in the hearts and souls of those who made it through to the other side. The title-novella, a near perfect story that makes the book worth reading alone, satirizes the will to live for those caught in the wars clutches. Crippled veteran Wolbrecht finds any method to survive wherever he can, even working as a double agent between two rival doctors at the insane asylum in which he is placed. The two Nazi doctors spend the war putting inmates to death to meet their high daily quota of injections, and plotting ways to find themselves holding the syringe against the arm of the other. As the war is drawing to a close, they set aside their differences and team up to find the Jewish boy Wolbrecht hid in the mountains years before in hopes that protecting one will save them from execution after the inevitable war trials. Survival, it seems, comes before any sense of right and wrong. They are willing to betray their fellow man when doing so keeps them in good favor, washing their hands of murder in the name of duty, and their act of saving someone is not an expression of goodwill but simple survival. They are even willing to kill in order to save. In the story Ressurection, two men live like rats in a tiny space within a wall to escape the Nazis, showing the amazing feats a human is capable of in order to survive.
Lind asks us what use is survival, what good is life? in a world where such unspeakable horrors can be held as commonplace.
What have you got to look forward to in Paris? Paris is only a city. Whom do you need anyway, and who needs you? You’re going to Paris. Well, what of it? Sex and drinking won’t make you any happier. And certainly working won’t. Money won’t do you a particle of good. What are you getting out of life?The will to survive keeps the reader empathizing with many of the characters, but Lind frequently reminds us that they are choosing to survive in a world that he continually paints as a disgusting, disturbing and depressing place, a world where the government decides who is suitable for life: ‘those who had no papers entitling them to live lined up to die.’ Cannibalism is a common theme in several stories, used as a metaphor of human interaction: the strong kill and eat the weak to survive.
If you don’t do that which disgusts you,’ says the cannibal in Journey Through the Night, ’what becomes of your disgust? It sticks in your throat. Nothing sticks in the throat of the man from Sankt Polten. He swallows all.In Hurrah for Freedom we see a nudist family of cannibals (you read that correctly) that eats their children and has a dead horse hung from the rafters, insisting that once it has rotted to a skeleton that their home country of Lithuania will be free. They are prideful of their ways, a lifestyle depicted as most revolting, simply because their lifestyle means they do not have to live under Russian occupation.
Religion figures prominently into many of these stories, and often in unique and surprising ways. There are many theological discussions between characters that are revealing into their hearts. In The Pious Brother, a darkly humorous story featuring an attractive young actress who can only achieve sexual gratification by seducing priests, an aging German Princess expresses her disgust at the common depictions of Jesus.
I want to know why our Savior is always represented as a soft, gently, I might almost say effeminate man. A man who could chase the moneychangers out of the temple with a whip, who had the physical strength to carry His own cross up a mountain, cannot possibly have looked like that. I refuse to think of him as a weakling.The Princess disgusts the priest as she takes pride in having sent all her sons off to die as members of the S.S. It is no surprise then that she would only love a Jesus depicted as strong and mighty, a Jesus that could properly represent the Third Reich. Her sort of God is found later in stories like The Window, where God walks among man as a gangster of sorts, employing terrorists and offering miracles in order to take men’s souls under threat of a knife-blade.
Highly original and darkly allegorical, Jakov Lind’s stories are an absolute delight. The themes are similar to those found in his intensely amazing [b:Landscape in Concrete|6162860|Landscape in Concrete|Jakov Lind|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1392868722s/6162860.jpg|6342058], yet the multiple stories allow Lind to assess the ideas for a wider ranging array of perspectives. The title-novella is one of the best stories I have read in a long time and has a startling and stunning conclusion that won’t soon be forgotten. This collection is powerful and disturbing, yet sooths with a humor that makes you laugh aloud, yet then wonder about your own morality if such notions can be regarded as funny. This is a perfect collection and one best suited for those who wish to stare into the abyss, for when the abyss stares back all you can do is laugh and laugh and laugh.
5/5
‘I’ve got to eat you. In the first place I’m hungry, and in the second place I like you. I told you right off that I like you and you thought, the guy is queer. But now you know. I’m a simple cannibal. It’s not a profession, it’s a need.’
kingkong's review against another edition
3.0
The main story was pretty cool and the other ones were just alright
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