A review by alexblackreads
A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France by Miranda Richmond Mouillot
2.0
I found this so boring. Mouillot writes about her grandparents' marriage and divorce, but without much actual knowledge of their marriage or divorce. They divorced when her mother was very young and as far as I could tell, haven't spoken in decades. So Mouillot doesn't have a whole lot to go on when she was writing this and it wound up mostly being conjecture and figuring out when they were in the same cities together. I get that she cares deeply about their relationship, but she failed to make me as a reader care.
The truly unfortunate part was that the marriage was the least interesting part of both her grandparents' lives. Her grandmother was a doctor, I believe a psychiatrist, in France in the 30s, and her grandfather was a Jewish translator at the Nuremberg trials. I was way more interested in both of those things, but both were relegated to short asides, or only brought up as they related to the marriage.
I get why the author cared, but there was very little in this book for me as a reader. I was so bored while reading this. It took me almost two weeks because I couldn't make myself read more than thirty or forty pages a day.
The truly unfortunate part was that the marriage was the least interesting part of both her grandparents' lives. Her grandmother was a doctor, I believe a psychiatrist, in France in the 30s, and her grandfather was a Jewish translator at the Nuremberg trials. I was way more interested in both of those things, but both were relegated to short asides, or only brought up as they related to the marriage.
I get why the author cared, but there was very little in this book for me as a reader. I was so bored while reading this. It took me almost two weeks because I couldn't make myself read more than thirty or forty pages a day.