i am not a big fan of oprah, but i really like what she is doing with her book club.

thanks to her featuring Night by Elie Wiesel in her book club, and bringing it back to ALL the book stores, i picked it up as well. it's a quick read, so i finished it during one of my flights a couple of weeks ago.

i was a bit disappointed with the book (i had very high expectations). it's probably not a popular stand to take, criticizing a book about the holocaust, but i'll do it anyway..

i didn't like it for the following reasons:

• i thought it was a bit over dramatic in its description of events. in my opinion just describing what happened without the added adjectives would have had a stronger impact.
• maybe it is the fact that it was written in the sixties (though the translation is very recent), but i did not connect to the language and the flow of the story
• it was a bit hollywoodish (too many things connected, too many characters intersected)
• i thought it smelled a bit of "truthiness", not that i doubt the core facts it just feels to me that some of the story is a bit embellished (in that sense it may be a theme oprah is going for following her success with james frey)

overall i think the story is very strong, but that the writing is weak (again a bit like mr. frey).

P.S

something tells me i am going to regret this post. but this is what i feel. maybe this is the point to say that my grandparents were holocaust survivors, so maybe it gives me some space to criticize Elie Wiesel in this overly politically correct world…