A review by duffypratt
Night by Elie Wiesel
5.0
I rarely comment on star ratings, but here I must. When I entered my books in Goodreads, I gave this 3 stars, based on my hazy recollection from having read it over 20 years earlier. I think that rating was honest, but who knows what I was thinking or doing when I first read this book, that it did not make that big an impression on me. It certainly should have.
This is a story about the defeat of the human spirit. Of course, it centers in the Holocaust, and the depictions are harrowing, though presented in a flat, matter of fact manner. What comes through clearly is that no matter how bad things got, they became the new normal, and things inevitably get worse. And on top of that, the narrators and others cling to the new normal, whatever it is, rather than risk the unknown. Thus, there are at least three opportunities in the book to escape future horrors, and at every point the narrator or his family chooses the horror that they think they know.
The other thing that is extraordinary is that Wiesel spares no-one. Of course, the German's are inhuman monsters. But they are not contrasted by noble, suffering Jews. Rather, the Jews sink to every depth imaginable simply trying to survive. And in the process of surviving (which is only the fate of a very few) they give up every shred of humanity and decency. Wiesel isn't blaming them, or forgiving them. He is simply stating the fact, and his condemnation applies first and foremost to himself.
It's a quite an extraordinary book, and one of the bleakest I've ever read. It makes, for example, McCarthy's The Road seem like a triumph of joy by comparison.
Upon re-reading January 2019-
Nothing much to add from previous review. It's a harrowing, brilliant book. It lost nothing on third reading. Hits just as hard as it did.
This is a story about the defeat of the human spirit. Of course, it centers in the Holocaust, and the depictions are harrowing, though presented in a flat, matter of fact manner. What comes through clearly is that no matter how bad things got, they became the new normal, and things inevitably get worse. And on top of that, the narrators and others cling to the new normal, whatever it is, rather than risk the unknown. Thus, there are at least three opportunities in the book to escape future horrors, and at every point the narrator or his family chooses the horror that they think they know.
The other thing that is extraordinary is that Wiesel spares no-one. Of course, the German's are inhuman monsters. But they are not contrasted by noble, suffering Jews. Rather, the Jews sink to every depth imaginable simply trying to survive. And in the process of surviving (which is only the fate of a very few) they give up every shred of humanity and decency. Wiesel isn't blaming them, or forgiving them. He is simply stating the fact, and his condemnation applies first and foremost to himself.
It's a quite an extraordinary book, and one of the bleakest I've ever read. It makes, for example, McCarthy's The Road seem like a triumph of joy by comparison.
Upon re-reading January 2019-
Nothing much to add from previous review. It's a harrowing, brilliant book. It lost nothing on third reading. Hits just as hard as it did.