A review by dhasenkampf
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
3.5
I enjoyed (as much as one could 'enjoy' a Holocaust story) the vast majority of this story. There were details I haven't read in other WWII stories, and I've never seen one with a character that experienced so many different aspects of the war. Being a POW, different ghettos, different camps, different jobs in camps, death marches, train rides, etc.
The reasoning I couldn't give a higher rating was because of the present-day interactions between the characters. The war timeline was fascinating, and I wanted to spend more time there, but every time the author returned to the current conversations with his father it slowed down the pacing too much for my tastes and I found myself bored. Hearing his father complain about his wife over and over and over again wasn't what I came to the book for. We could have seen this one time and it would have been sufficient. And I kept having this feeling throughout the book. There was just too much time spent on the fractious relationship between the author and his father.
The reasoning I couldn't give a higher rating was because of the present-day interactions between the characters. The war timeline was fascinating, and I wanted to spend more time there, but every time the author returned to the current conversations with his father it slowed down the pacing too much for my tastes and I found myself bored. Hearing his father complain about his wife over and over and over again wasn't what I came to the book for. We could have seen this one time and it would have been sufficient. And I kept having this feeling throughout the book. There was just too much time spent on the fractious relationship between the author and his father.