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Nov 2020
11:32pm, 15 Nov 2020
752 posts
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Peregrinator
Did HHhH appear as a film? If so, did anyone see it? In film you have to decide lots of details that you don't know, from the colour of the car upwards. Binet seemed even more suspicious of films.
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Nov 2020
10:41am, 16 Nov 2020
47,326 posts
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McGoohan
The story's been told several times in film of course, but apparently HHhH was filmed as 'The Man With The Iron Heart'. It has quite poor reviews but apparently veers from the book enormously - ironic considering Binet's dislike of such tampering.
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Nov 2020
5:38pm, 18 Nov 2020
20,526 posts
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Columba
Finished over this morning's tea. Whoever said the ending made them feel tearful, I'm with them.
Czech is not one of my languages, and I had difficulty with the names, especially when there were duplicates. And I'm vague about the geography, and the history of the whole area, and could have done with some maps. But apart from that, I thought it was a wonderful book. I soon got used to the authorial asides, indeed they become an integral part of the story. The whole thing fascinated me, having taken place in the years just before my birth (is everybody fascinated by the just-before-I-came-into-the-world period of history?). As a child I was vaguely aware that we were just out of a war, but it wasn't until the Eichmann trial, which had me horror-struck on a daily basis, that I began to realise some of the things that had been going on.
Characterisation good; I felt I knew all these people (well, the main ones, that is). And when we finally get to the account of the assassination attempt, it is so detailed, without being tedious, that I felt I could see it all, moment by moment. Translation good too; didn't grate at all, as translations often do.
While I had heard of Babi Yar as a place where a huge massacre of Jews had taken place, I didn't know the details. The ghoulish description of the horrible smell emanating from under the earth, and the still more ghoulish account of clods of earth jumping up as the gases of decomposition worked their way to the surface, was far more than I wanted to know.
Binet comments in passing that it was also Roma who were massacred in huge numbers, not only Jews. And there were other groups targeted as groups.
Not sure if Binet made this point explicitly, but such events should never be forgotten. Any time we're inclined to think comfortably that most people are basically good at heart, we have to acknowledge that with a madman at the top, and insufficient resistance to him in the next layers below him, hell on earth can be a reality and most people will go along with it, if rather unhappily.
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Nov 2020
6:09pm, 18 Nov 2020
20,527 posts
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Columba
Having now read everyone else's comments:
Dio and I seem to be very largely in agreement. I think this has happened before.
Whether the Mercedes was black or dark green is not - agreed - essential to the story itself; but the fact that it bothers Binet, and goes on and on bothering him, and he comments that even his girlfriend got fed up with it, is important to showing us how far the story got under his skin, which given that the book is not just a historical account but a "this is how it gets me" account, is essential to the book.
Similarly re RR's comment that Binet doesn't need to tell us that Himmler is despicable. No, for the story he doesn't; but for the book he does.
I'm a bit disquieted by LD's feeling that the events described might just "glide across the surface of my brain". That may well happen with distant historical events; has WWII and associated atrocities already become so distant?
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Nov 2020
6:12pm, 18 Nov 2020
20,528 posts
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Columba
Re the landlady having "given her daughters to the parachutists". I didn't read it in quite such a bald way (will have to re-read); rather, I took it that she introduced them; and that anything that developed thereafter was the decision of the daughters and the parachutists.
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Nov 2020
7:33pm, 18 Nov 2020
55,057 posts
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Diogenes
I got the impression that the daughters were quite keen to meet the airmen, but it did seem that they were presented in a way that said “please make full use of all the facilities” rather like old B&Bs would advertise use of the trivet.
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Nov 2020
7:46pm, 18 Nov 2020
31,691 posts
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LazyDaisy
I wasn't the person who said that, Columba. (About the events gliding across my brain.)
In fact, picking up on your comment about being interested in events around the years of your birth:
When we visited Prague, we saw an exhibition of children's drawings in the Pinkas Synagogue. The drawings were done when the children were incarcerated in Terezin, before they were transported to extermination camps. They made a big impact on me, and that was in no small part because the last transport was on 18 May 1944 - exactly ten years (*only* ten years!) before my birth. That date linked me to those children, and I certainly wouldn't forget them.
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Nov 2020
9:01pm, 18 Nov 2020
42,622 posts
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LindsD
It was me. I'm also LD 
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Nov 2020
9:01pm, 18 Nov 2020
42,623 posts
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LindsD
And it was me who said the ending made me tearful
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Nov 2020
9:02pm, 18 Nov 2020
42,624 posts
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LindsD
The gliding thing is more because they are so overwhelming and enormous.
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