Book review: If This is a Man / The Truce

If This Is a Man is a memoir by Jewish Italian writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.

The Truce describes the author's experiences from the liberation of Auschwitz (Monowitz), until he reaches home in Turin, Italy, after a long journey. He describes the situation in different displaced persons camps after the Second World War.

I'll do TT first, because it is easier. Although not entirely free of horror - we begin in Monowitz, lots or people still die as conditions don't instantly improve, PL is still desperately sick - in the end it turns into a weird picaresque adventure, as a combination of uncertain times at the end of the war, and traditional Soviet incompetence or disinterest, sees PL taking a distinctly non-optimal trajectory home. There are vast multi-day train rides to uncertain destinations. There are chancers of dubious morality ripping off the local peasants; there's an entire summer out in the woods where odd subcultures develope. Conditions slowly improve; eventually he gets home.

ITIAM is harder. Primarily it is intended as witness. This is awkward for me; I "know" this stuff already; I have no doubt that the Holocaust happened. Is it "useful" for me to learn the details? Perhaps. PL is of course not a typical concentration camper, since he survived, unlike the vast proportion of the others. Partly this was because he was only picked up late; partly because after a bit he got a cushy job; partly perhaps just luck. I am just a teensy tiny bit suspicious that there are things we aren't told, that might not be entirely to his credit; but only because that is almost inevitable, if you survived.

Various incidents or typical situations are told. Example: the soup for each mess was not stirred, because the soup-dispenser got the dregs which had the good bits, so no-one wanted to be first in line. Example: standing apparently pointlessly on parade. Example: awaiting the coming of less terrible weather as winter became spring. So the story is told not day-by-day but as a series of typical things; wiki provides a chapter list. But this does make you half forget that the terrible things continue. The end, The Story of Ten Days, is diary-like and I think works better for it.

The writing style is not brilliant; wiki goes for "calm sobriety" and continues He ascribed the clarity of his language to the habits acquired during his training as a chemist: "My model was that of the weekly reports, a normal practice in factories: they must be concise, precise and written in a language accessible to all levels of the firm's hierarchy" which is all very well but again, not sparkling prose.

Book review: Fourth Consort

By Edward "Mickey 7" Ashton. I think the number in the title is a mistake, because it invites inevitable comparison with Mickey 7. And there are too many similarities. One of those similarities is a decent story, so that's good. But another is the rather bland (or as I said for M7, "pedestrian") writing style, which is bad. We again have a down-on-his-luck hero with a feisty female companion, with a very similar line in self-deprecating humour to M7.

In fact having started this book I put it down to get through The Left Hand of God, and somewhat reluctantly came back to it. If the book has a moral it is that trying to be a good person is good; this however is also bland, and unsubtly done.

Coming now to the spoilers, I think the whole predator / prey species stuff  is strange; anything capable of developing a civilisation is going to understand that brute physical combat strength is a poor way to settle disputes. In fact this could be an interesting question because I am interested in models of civilisation; but I think the model he presents is too unrealistic to be interesting. We do get the occasional: "you claim to be creatures of honour" - that std.trope - "and yet you keep doing these things that look distinctly sneaky; are you sure you're so different to us?" but he doesn't really explore this, instead he lets the aliens get off with "it may look sneaky to you but it wasn't really".

Book review: the Left Hand of God

Teenager grows up tough in brutal isolated commmunity¹, learning combat skills; with some buddies he runs away, gets treated as oik by disdainful aristos who reevaluate him when he saves them; and so on. You've heard it all before, of course; echoes of Red Sister and a hundred others. And yet I finished it, indeed I got perhaps two thirds of the way through with enthusiasm; as perhaps happens in real life, he didn't deal with good fortune as well as with bad.

Even in the early sections there are hints of problems that become more obvious later: there is a vast Sancturary, training religious warriors for a War Somewhere Else but who is supplying all the food and other material, indeed who is supplying all the people? Why do the nearby rulers not seem at all worried by a vast army being trained on their doorstep?

Anyway, Our Heroes run away to the nearby² Mediaeval city-state-empire. Our Hero's first - no, second; they also "rescue" the Chancellor by unbelievable coincidence - bit of luck is saving The Princess in the catacombs. But this is grotesquely jammed-in: she had no business being there, especially alone, and the book doesn't even attempt to explain the inexplicable; and it all goes downhill from there really; Our Heroes rise implausibly in this culture that despises them, and inevitably Our Hero gets off with³ the Princess but it's OK because they are mutually In Love. Finally the Order invades and defeats the city-state-empire, which throughly deserved defeat by having absolutely no scouts or border defences of any kind to give warning. This enables Our Hero to be captured by the Order, and detached from his Princess, as is presumably required for the tale in volume two, which I find myself unlikely to peruse.

The writing style is bland and the world itself somewhat flat, and careless. For example, at one point Our Hero and his Counsellor go off into the woods to a Retreat; a house. Yet it has no staff, no one to look after it; as though he just couldn't be bothered to write plausibility in; it's like it was in a video game, where the vegetation doesn't grow and the roof never needs mending or the linen cleaning. The great city-state of Memphis has no discernable structure or buildings of any interest. There's no real world, beyond our characters.

Notes

1. Of course, he ends up fundamentally good, and unscarred - mentally, if not physically - by this terrible upbringing, though he may actually turn out to the the anti-Christ in the next book, in case you care. Oddly enough, we-as-a-society don't believe this bad-upbringing-makes-you-resilient stuff; we rather think that it leads to poor character and criminality. Of course we might be wrong but I think I'd have liked the book to take some at least token consideration of this point.

2. Fairly nearby I think; I didn't to-be-honest pay much attention to how many days their travel took but they were on foot.

3. While all in favour of a bit of sex - preferrably somewhat more graphic that discovering that she is incredibly beautiful and has long legs - I'm again disappointed by the sheer... blandness? Carelessness? Lack of attention to detail? The culture is one that prizes their women; allowing them to be alone with an oik is not plausible; servants would have been omnipresent but are waved away; and so on.

Peaks: Stanage

Gosh, have we really not been since Peaks: Stanage and Froggatt at the end of March 2024? I fear not. This time it is simpler: off at 7, to Stanage in the morning - after a stop at the Outside cafe in Hathersage of course - lunch back in the cafe with a pause for E to buy new "light" walking boots / shoes¹, and D to buy new rock shoes. And then pm back to Stanage. We were fairly casual about it all and by no means pushing for as much climbing as possible; we had a long lunch hour and more than an hour's sunlight left when we headed home. One minor note: the Popular End carpark is now on RingGo. Unordered pix are here, but I didn't take many. This is all at or near Leaning Buttress.

Morning

GPS. We warmed up on Chockstone Direct S 4a, which I lead (it's the obvious line 2-3 m to the left of D in this pic). We would have done a VDish thing, had one been conveniently available, but S was a good grade to start as it turned out; E and D followed. Then D leads us up Armchair Buccaneer  HVS 5a, which again was a good choice. D has done very little trad leading, but the route takes friends and he managed to get them in, and with his reach and strength he had more margin on some of the sections I found close to my limits. E however found it a little beyond her limits.

Afternoon

GPS. D wanted something harder so top roped an E1 5b, Easter Rib, in his new shoes. E and I did the nice line of April Crack HS 4b and then Right-hand Trinity S 4b which has an awkward bulge at 2/3 height.

Here's D again, on his 5b, at the point where he has strayed a bit too far left off the rib onto a blank section. The woman in pale blue is in April crack; E is seen at the top belaying D. Hargreaves' Original VS 4c goes up the face further left. I slightly regret not trying that... maybe next time.

And then home; back around 9 after an uneventful drive.

Notes

1. For the low low price of £240, gadzooks.