Book Review: Winter of the World, by Ken Follett (2012)

Perhaps the most enthusiastic I can be about this novel is to say that, if you begin reading it, and if you are in any way interested in history, you will finish it. This, surely, is an indication of a book worth reading, although not necessarily an indicator of a good book. How can this be? Well, first of all, the novel is not difficult to read. Anyone who is any more a prolific reader than I am will probably make short work of it, despite its 800+ page count.

I embarked on this book after a copy was lent to me, explaining why I have only read the middle instalment of Follett’s The Century trilogy, which follows the same set of families through the fortunes and hardships of the previous century. This episode covers the most tumultuous period of those 100 years, from Hitler’s rise to power to the defeat of Japan and post-war carving up of Europe. The scope of the book is therefore vast and the plot ambitious by any standards, although, of course, you already know the backdrop of the story. Having said that, interesting insights are offered into individual aspects of the war. For me, for example, the telling of the story behind the Manhattan project and the development of the nuclear bomb was particularly interesting, and the unfolding of the war from a Russian perspective is possibly less familiar to most readers.

Despite its vast canvass, the plot doesn’t ever get bogged down, instead skipping along at a rapid pace, which keeps you turning the pages. The author undoubtedly deserves credit for successfully carving a story through such a jungle of potential narratives, and keeping things on track in the way he does is certainly no mean feat. It should also not be a surprise that the storyline is often grim, particularly the consequences of the tightening of the Nazi’s grip of power in Germany, and also the aftermath of their downfall. The scene in which Carla is raped by Russian soldiers during the fall of Berlin was especially hard to read.

However, I think the epic breadth and scale is also the book’s downfall, namely a lack of depth. Despite the main characters being entirely fictional, their fate is broadly predictable and, perhaps with the exception of the suffering and experiences of Carla, and at a push also Daisy, it is difficult to feel much empathy for any of them. This isn’t helped very much by the clumpy nature of the prose, with an obsessive use of colons in the punctuation, and granite feel to the dialogue. It is perhaps unfortunate that I read this book after reading Vikram Seth’s novel (see previous post), which reads like a poem in comparison to this brick. Also, the narrative’s obsession with sex becomes irritating, either boringly predictable or – to the other extreme – so surprising that it is completely unrealistic. Yes, it was wartime and thus people might have tended to take life a day at a time, but even in such circumstances, you would imagine a touch more subtlety.

Favourite character: Volodya Peshkov. He’s a Red Army intelligence officer with a conscience, and he’s good at his job, which means he’s cool.