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The Year Is '42
A Novel
by Nella Bielski
Set during WWII, Bielski's novel centers on a German officer whose disdain for the Nazi cause begins to grow while he is stationed in Paris, and then even more so after he is transferred to eastern Europe.
Pantheon, 224 pages
11/30/2004
$18.95
ISBN: 0375422862
Fiction
Historical Fiction
NOTES:
Translated from French by John Berger and Lisa Appignanesi.
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Washington Post Peter Franck
Bielski's triumph is to demonstrate anew the sustaining power of art and personal relationships during Europe's darkest hours.
The Guardian Virginia Rounding
There is not a word too many in The Year is '42, and the translators have done a beautiful job. This is one of those very rare novels that you want to read again as soon as you've got to the end.
The Independent Julia Pascal
To my astonishment, this haunting novel left me with a feeling of hope, and never despair.
The Spectator Jeremy Worman
A mystical aspect to the novel explores how, at some level, the forces of good may still prevail over the horrors of the historical situation. A postscript movingly reveals what happened to the characters after 1942, and ties up the disparate strands.
The Guardian Lisa O'Kelly
An exquisite Russian doll of a novel: a tale within a tale within a tale. As you near the end, you wonder how the many stories it tells can possibly fit convincingly together and then it surprises you by making them do just that.
Daily Telegraph Jessica Mann
A work of art which will be painful to remember but hard to forget.
Boston Globe Kevin O'Kelly
That's the brilliance of this book. Bielski never forgets that history matters because it happens to people as unimportant and odd as we are.
The New York Times Book Review Anderson Tepper
Bielski, a native of Ukraine who lives in Paris and writes in French, carefully constructs an unadorned novel of daily life in wartime, and the bit-by-bit poisoning of a conscience.
San Francisco Chronicle Adam Bregman
In the end, the reader, caught up in The Year Is '42, may find everything to be so realistic that it seems almost impossible that the story and all the characters are entirely fictional.
Booklist Brendan Driscoll
Bielski's dialogue-intensive phrasing is very much the strength of this book, palpating a broad spectrum of moral issues with a subtle touch that grants much of this selection a hazy, dreamlike quality. [15 Oct 2004, p.388]
Library Journal Edward Cone
A tale of power and beauty that transcends its flaws. [1 Dec 2004, p.97]
Los Angeles Times Susan Salter Reynolds
Nella Bielski has written a shadowy novel, riddled with doubts and fears and suspicions that blow through the two cities and the village in a ghostly way. And it is full of beauty; fields, rivers, delicious meals and conversations.
PopMatters Lester Pimentel
Bielski's skillful weaving of European history with the lives of her imagined characters inspires our confidence in her labyrinthine narration. An ostensibly throw-away detail or observation reemerges later as an important nexus that connects characters in meaningful ways, or provides the illuminating background behind a sudden development.
Daily Telegraph Gerard Woodward
It is perhaps the author's Ukrainian origins... that make the Russian episodes particularly strong, but this story of human compassion enduring a reign of political barbarism is conveyed in a sparse, accurate, evocative prose worthy of its European ancestry.
New York Observer Martin Goodman
A confused but ultimately moving novel that reads at first like the genealogies of a Tolstoy saga compacted into a Proustian salon and delivered in a stutter of sentences. [29 Nov 2004, p.29]
Publishers Weekly
A plethora of characters and backstories muddle the plot and draw attention, and interest, away from Karl and his conflicted allegiance to his fatherland.
Kirkus Reviews
Bielski's tone lends grace to her project, but, sans supporting detail, it seems an affectation that leaves the whole feeling rather pointless.
 The average user rating for this book is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes
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