Count of Monte Cristo: Chapter 34

I am way behind on The Count of Monte Cristo. This is partly because I left it behind when I went to Chicago (it's such a big book!), but also partly because Dumas has started a lengthy digression about a couple of randos who are visiting Rome during Carnival.

Now admittedly, one of these guys is super curious about the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, so it sort of ties in with the rest of the book, in the way that Hugo's giant digression about Waterloo ties in with the rest of Les Miserables because it ends with Marius's father meeting Thenardier, but mostly it is getting in the way of VENGEANCE. It's hard to share Franz's curiosity when I already know everything there is to know about Dantes!

And I am already pretty sure that Franz will never learn most of it, because Dantes doesn't seem like the kind of person who is going to sit him down all "I'm an escaped convict who is presumed dead and got really wealthy because I found a fabulous treasure in my cave on Monte Cristo."

However, we do have some bandits going on, so that's something at least. It's hard to say no to bandits.

Book Review: Krysia

Krystyna Mihulka’s Krysia: A Polish Girl’s Stolen Childhood During World War II is a memoir about her years in Siberia after the Soviets deported her family from Poland. It’s meant to be a memoir for children, and I suspect that morbidly inclined children will love it. I probably would have eaten it up when I was ten.

For me as an adult, though, it suffered somewhat because I couldn’t help comparing it to Esther Hautzig’s The Endless Steppe, which is a minor classic and covers much the same ground. Obviously Hautzig’s and Mihulka’s experiences are not the same, and if you’re interested in the topic both memoirs are quite readable; but if you’re only going to read one, Hautzig’s is longer and meatier and far more alive with telling detail and remembered emotion.

It helps probably that Hautzig wrote her book in the 1960s, much closer to the events depicted, so her memories may have been fresher. And I also think that Hautzig is simply a better writer; I read her book years ago and I can still remember parts of it, like the scene where they dye curtains yellow with onion skins to cheer up their Siberian hut, or Hautzig’s grief when she has to leave Siberia before the Pushkin recitation contest she worked so hard to prepare for.

But of course I also have to take into account the fact that I read The Endless Steppe in junior high, which is a susceptible age; perhaps I would have been just as enthralled by Krysia if I had read it then.