Lezersrecensie
Raw, gruel, gruesome and harsh
Polish-American author Jerzy Kosinski (1933 - 1991) won the ‘Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger‘ with ‘The Painted Bird’ released in 1965 and was revised in 1976. The version read is the Bantam pocket from 1976 7th printing with 213 pages.
WWII just started in Eastern-Europe when a nameless seven-year old child, maybe Jewish or a Gipsy, is taken away from his parents by a man with their approval. The child will be taken to a safe village, away from Germans, to live with an older woman. He misses his parents and hopes they will find him. Soon he has to leave, which will be the start of traveling from village to village, and trouble seems to follow him everywhere. He becomes a witness of all kinds of gruesome events, becomes a victim of abuse and taunts, but because of his age he sees things differently and mostly in an innocent way. He thinks it is because of his black hair and olive skin that people look away and do what they do to him. On eye contact people will cross themself and spit three times on the ground. When he gets older, he thinks he has figured out how to solve his problem, but if that is really the right solution.
Jerzy Kosinski was Jewish and lived in Poland as a child during the war, this seems to be the inspiration of the story. But Kosinski makes it clear it was fictional with how events take place and not autobiographical, else he had endured a lot of violence done to him. Because Kosinski uses a child of a young age it hits harder when something bad happens, mostly because nothing seems to be in nuance. So the story Kosinski wrote is raw, gruel, gruesome and harsh to read, where in the beginning is near gore and later on becomes more bizarre. Some events Kosinski wrote are a bit too detailed, as if he witnessed it himself as a child. Kosinski didn’t go into a lot of details on the characters so they became a bit flat, however most of them are there just for one chapter. Also Kosinski didn’t wrote a lot of details about villages visited so it was unclear how they looked, how big they were, and how the houses looked.
At the beginning of the story the question may arise: why did I start reading this? It was tough to read on, because each chapter something horrible seems to happen, although near the end it became a bit less and more abusive and bizarre. Chapter twelve was kind of over the top. Lots of times during reading a break was needed, but also putting the book away came to mind. Glad to have finished reading this book, so it doesn’t stay any longer on the shelf.
WWII just started in Eastern-Europe when a nameless seven-year old child, maybe Jewish or a Gipsy, is taken away from his parents by a man with their approval. The child will be taken to a safe village, away from Germans, to live with an older woman. He misses his parents and hopes they will find him. Soon he has to leave, which will be the start of traveling from village to village, and trouble seems to follow him everywhere. He becomes a witness of all kinds of gruesome events, becomes a victim of abuse and taunts, but because of his age he sees things differently and mostly in an innocent way. He thinks it is because of his black hair and olive skin that people look away and do what they do to him. On eye contact people will cross themself and spit three times on the ground. When he gets older, he thinks he has figured out how to solve his problem, but if that is really the right solution.
Jerzy Kosinski was Jewish and lived in Poland as a child during the war, this seems to be the inspiration of the story. But Kosinski makes it clear it was fictional with how events take place and not autobiographical, else he had endured a lot of violence done to him. Because Kosinski uses a child of a young age it hits harder when something bad happens, mostly because nothing seems to be in nuance. So the story Kosinski wrote is raw, gruel, gruesome and harsh to read, where in the beginning is near gore and later on becomes more bizarre. Some events Kosinski wrote are a bit too detailed, as if he witnessed it himself as a child. Kosinski didn’t go into a lot of details on the characters so they became a bit flat, however most of them are there just for one chapter. Also Kosinski didn’t wrote a lot of details about villages visited so it was unclear how they looked, how big they were, and how the houses looked.
At the beginning of the story the question may arise: why did I start reading this? It was tough to read on, because each chapter something horrible seems to happen, although near the end it became a bit less and more abusive and bizarre. Chapter twelve was kind of over the top. Lots of times during reading a break was needed, but also putting the book away came to mind. Glad to have finished reading this book, so it doesn’t stay any longer on the shelf.
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