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HomeShop at BookSurgeFictionWar & MilitaryThe Cobbler of Normandy |
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 I wanted to like it, but.... Jun 02, 2009
I really wanted to like "The Cobbler of Normandy", as it offered an intriguing and dramatic premise; the activities of the French Resistance in Normandy, and the British and American operatives who worked with them in the lead-up to the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. The author has an interesting background, and would seem uniquely suited by his life experience to write such a narration. He has obviously done an enormous amount of research on WWII secret operations, and spent time on the ground in Normandy. It all adds up to almost 600 pages of not-very-well organized episodes, which would still be an exciting and suspenseful read except for two things. He has a tin-ear for dialogue, and no ability to make cardboard cut-out characters come alive. (The scenes of sexual encounters are also pretty cringe-inducing.) And I would have thought that someone with first-hand memories of Nazi occupation would be better able to convey the realities of wartime Europe, six decades ago. According to the materiel in the press kit with the book, Mr. Berliner worked with four different editors, but he would seem to have paid very little attention to any of them.
There was the potential for a good book in "The Cobbler of Normandy" but as it stands, it's a rough draft in need of heroic amounts of pruning and polish ... or the work of all four editors at once.
If you like well written books, don't buy this one May 29, 2009
The author clearly has little understanding of how to write, which is bad enough, but the publisher/editor apparently did nothing to help him improve it, which is unforgivable. He changes tense in the middle of a paragraph, switches from dialog to character description in the middle of a paragraph, jumps around from scene to scene without any breaks, uses false, stilted, anachronistic dialog, and I could go on. And this is just in the first hundred pages. I bought this for a friend who loves historical fiction, and she couldn't get past the first couple of chapters. She lent it to another friend, who said the same thing. They gave it to me, and you've read my review. This book came highly recommended on a TV/news show I was watching, so my only advice is... don't believe any good reviews of this book. The author should stop writing (better yet, he should never have started), the publisher should stop publishing, and the editor should be fired. Buy something else.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
THE COBBLER OF NORMANDY Jan 17, 2009
I JUST FORCED MYSELF TO READ THE COBBLER OF NORMANDY. I SAY FORCED BECAUSE IT WAS PAINFUL TO TRY TO READ. BUT, I KEPT HOPING THINGS WOULD IMPROVE. NO SUCH LUCK.
SENTENCE STRUCTURE, PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE AND SPELLING ERRORS ARE ON EVERY SINGLE PAGE. THESE WERE JUST A FEW OF THE ERRORS. MR. BERLINER SHOULD HAVE RESEARCHED WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE DURING WW2. I AM AWARE OF HIS BACK GROUND BUT I JUST HAVE TO WONDER WHY HE DIDN'T TRY TO BE MORE ACCURATE.
THE COMPANY ([...]) THAT RECOMMENDED THIS BOOK SHOULD BE FORCED TO REFUND THE PURCHASE PRICE TO EVERYONE WHO BOUGHT THIS BOOK. I KNOW I WILL NEVER TRUST THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS AGAIN.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Teenage writing with no editing Jan 02, 2009
Poor grammar, poor syntax. Reads as if written by a well-meaning teenager. If you are over 13 you will be wasting your money.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
An enormous disappointment Dec 29, 2008
This book was an enormous disappointment. I am a D-Day buff and love reading just about anything about the D-Day invasion and the OSS. I tried my best to get into it, but the book reads as though English is a third language for the author. Tenses go back and forth, even in the same paragraph. Is and then was. Characters appear without any sense of who they are or why they are even mentioned and then they are never heard of again. Reading the book was just outright irritating. I have a major collection of material on D-Day. But this one won't be added. It's going to the trash without even finishing it.
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