A review by lfs
Keep Saying Their Names by Edoardo Ballerini, Simon Stranger

3.0

I found this a bit hard to get through. The story itself is a quite fascinating, though gruesome, chapter of WW2 that I was not familiar with, but I haaaaated the format of this book. Stranger take us on an alphabetical tour through history, jumping back and forth between storylines involving 4 different groups of people; some presented as traditional third person fiction narrative, one as a second person tribute and then a first person, autobiographic narrative underpinning the whole thing. I had a hard time keeping track of the characters and their various connections, and the piecemeal doling out of information and frequent time leaps made for an at times disorienting experience. Although I appreciate the ambition--and certainly the heartfelt intention behind the book, clearly personal for the author--for me, it's a mess. :(