It is not surprising that Laura Hillenbrand has only written two books. The first book Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and One Racehorse she finished in 2001. And as I wrote in my blog about this book, the amount of research she put into that novel was astounding. If anything, she put more research into writing Unbroken, that's why I'm not surprised it took her seven years to write it. The story is about a young American lieutenant Louie Zamperini who is stuck on a raft for weeks after his plane went down over the Pacific.
It's such an interesting novel, because you can sense in everything sentence you read that Hillenbrand knows what she is talking about. Everything she writes has been thoroughly researched. Remarks and description are never made in vain and everything that is written carries weight. So much so, that I have already bought a book she quotes as a source. Saying that the story is extraordinary does not do Zamperini's life any justice. The way his odyssey is described is not sad, it's uplifting and at the same time nerve-wrecking.
It's not Hillenbrand's fault that you can't read the story through Zamperini's eyes and that you distance yourself from the narrative. It's because the human mind is designed not to imagine such hardships, because even thinking about going through one or two of the things he goes through is unthinkable. One cannot fail to compare Seabiscuit to Zamperini. Hillenbrand has set a path for herself in describing someone's hardships and overcoming them against all odds. I don't mind if it's going to take another nine years and I don't care what the next book will be about, but Hillenbrand please keep writing!
No comments:
Post a Comment