The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel
By: Heather Morris / Narrated By: Richard Armitage
Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
Hmmm… I didn’t like it, but then I realized it was true, and now I feel all guilty…
Okay, so, like, my laptop crashed just after I finished, but did not SAVE, my review of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and now I’m all out of sorts and not feeling like being all Politically Correct like I was in the initial review. So bear with me here.
First, I don’t mean to make light of what was a HORROR SHOW of a time in history. I’m a bit of a Holocaust History Buff, so I feel like I’ve educated myself pretty well and am not wandering around all ignorant and insisting that it never happened.
So there’s that.
But there’s also that over on Audible, this audiobook, with its flaws, with its plodding narration (Sorry, Richard Armitage. I know you’re talented, skilled, can do Charles Dickens like noBODY’s business, but did you have to make EVERYthing soooooo ponderous, soooooooo weighty that I had to alter my usual x1.25 speed up to x1.5 to survive?!?), well, Audible’s reviewers have it rated at 4.8 stars…
WOW. Near perfection.
For a story where Every. Single. Inmate. is sweet of temper, good of nature, and all have Hearts of Gold. They share graciously, have kind and bracing words Every. Single. Sentence. And each German is Evil Personified. Add to that that Every. Single. Atrocity. the Nazis were known to commit is here in this one slender volume, an audiobook that comes in at under 7 1/2 hours. Ya got ‘em all here: Gypsies! Russian soldiers! Mengele! Castration! The kind peasants who’ll give you food! The American caught in the Round Ups! Torture to confess names!
And it goes on and on and on. Or, well, it does for 7 1/2 hours. Add to that, Lale and Gita seem to have noooo problem getting to see each other (all with a bit of sausage, a piece of chocolate, the promise of a pair of nylons), and they get to run off and have the occasional “passionate” shag, and I got bored.
But then I got to the end, and there’s an Epilogue! There’re Author’s Notes! There’s an Afterword! There’s all this STUFF that says it all happened to two real people and follows what happened during the rest of their lives, and I started feeling all guilty for being bored and rolling my eyes here and there.
I don’t expect you to agree with me. There’s that Near-Perfect Rating and all. But just know what you’re getting into. And seriously, I do blame Richard Armitage somewhat even tho’ he’s dead-on with his accents (Ya ever hear a Brit do an American accent? We all come off sounding like we’re from either New York or Georgia. But I guess they hate it when we do British accents as well…?). His American sounds like a plain ol’ American, no weird bells or whistles. And he doesn’t do some weird attempt for the feminine; it’s pretty much a straight read, which I appreciated. But the somber tones, the funereal pace? >YAWN<
Make of it what you will, but I really felt like it was written with such a heavy hand that there was no room for me to feel anything cuz Heather Morris was so busy TELLING me EXACTLY what I should be feeling.
Or maybe I just am an insensitive jerk.
Whatever.
But now I really must go, and this time I really must hit SAVE…
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