Rating: 
Summary: Staggering
Review: This book tells the story (perhaps not entirely factual) of Jerzy Kosinski's flight from the Nazis during World War II. During these years, Kosinski lived in the rural villages of Poland, and his story is a staggering depiction of the peculiar culture of the people he encountered.The picture of rural Polish culture that Kosinski paints is of a people devoutly Catholic but obsessed with spirits, demons, and Occult rituals. To the peasants he encounters, Kosinski's dark features marked him as an evil Gypsy, and Kosinksi has to strive constantly to avoid death at the hands of superstitious peasants who are hopelessly ignorant and xenophobic. The depth of the stupidity of the peasants Kosinski describes is astonishing, and is rivaled only by Kosinski's rich descriptions of the sex and violence that they practice. I don't think there's a word of dialogue in this book. So it's all description: description of what Kosinski had to do to stay alive, description of the way Polish men beat their wives and maim their rivals, description of rape, massacre, and unspeakable atrocities. It's ultimately the repeated, graphic images of sex and violence that drive this book. Kosinksi is a master of realism, and his prose never ceases to be gripping, compelling, and disturbing. Each chapter reads like a very short story, so the book really keeps moving. The reader can move quickly from story to story, each rich in characters and haunting images of incredible emotional power. Kosinski's is one of the most important books to come out of Holocaust literature, and after reading the terrifying experiences that Kosinski describes, you won't find it surprising that he commit suicide years after the war ended. I feel uncomfortable calling Holocaust literature entertaining, but this book is as captivating as a New York Times bestseller. This is a chilling, staggering account of experiences occupying the border between life and death, sanity and madness. Despite the darkness of the book, a certain vague optimism urges with its glorious ending, which I won't give away, so this book isn't a troubling downer. Throughout its light and dark scenes, 'The Painted Bird' is a tour de force of narrative prowess.
Rating:
Summary: Harbrace This - Painted Bird A Masterpiece
Review: ...This is the story of a child who is abandoned by his parents in the midst of World War II. He grows up on the streets and learns about life firsthand and sees how terrible it can be. Kozinski, using brilliant prose, also instructs the reader on exactly how awful life is for some people. This book does contain images that may shock or offend people, but for the person who can put all the brutal violence and sex aside, there is a story that is powerful because of the truth it contains. Kozinski obviously thought a lot about how he would teach the readers about the cruel reality that they live in, and he found it appropriate to choose scenes that not all readers will enjoy. Kozinski discovered that the only way to give the reader a sense of how harsh life is, he had to write an "in your face" provocative novel with many scenes which test the limits of censorship. As the main character grows older, he experiences more. Since he has no parents to teach him any values, he takes in
what he sees and creates his own set of values. The boy discovers that the most important asset in life is power. He believes that power is the key to surviving in the world. He makes many attempts to gain power, but multiple times must bear witness to his own powerlessness. A culmination of all this results in the loss of a source of inumerable power, his words. Kozinski portrays very well and very accurately the struggle between the boy and the rest of the world and the hardships he must deal with. He has no parents to turn to, most other adults he meets beat him, and children of his own age cruelly killed the boy's best friend in front of his eyes. With nobody to turn to, he learns to live by himself and for himself. Overall the Painted Bird is an amazing book. Kozinski is a brilliant author who does not "sugar coat" any of the aspects of life he describes. There will definitely be people who can not handle this book or do not want to handle it. This book is recommended to any avid reader. This easily ranks among the best books ever written and is one that the reader will never forget. I apologize for not properly using italics for the title of the book as demonstrated in the Harbrace College Handbook.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre, Kafkaesque
Review: After I read Painted Bird, digested it and read it again I was awfully excited about Jerzy Kozinski. Painted Bird is about the human condition, set in a time and place where the human condition had the whole spectrum of opportunities to manifest itself. Kozinski's perceptions of humanity are poignant, surgical, honest and brutal. I love this book. After reading it I attempted other Kozinskis as they emerged and found that all fell completely flat for me. This one's in a class all its own, in my view.
Rating:
Summary: Morally irresponsible to candycoat
Review: There seem to be a lot of people out there who feel that life is all bunnies and flowers, and anything that isn't should be hidden away or candycoated. This book takes place during an era which is morally irresponsible to candycoat. How else do you get across the horrors that truly took place in most of Europe throughout WWII without seriously insulting and compromising not only truth, history, and reality, but also the memories of those who perished as well as the aging members of that generation who can never forget what they saw and experienced? The awful things in this book, such as when the young plowboy literally loses his eyes, the scene the unnamed boy witnesses between Quail, Ewka, Makar, and the goat, Rainbow raping the beautiful young Jewish woman, or the pillage and rape-spree the Kalmuks go on, aren't in here to be titilating, but rather because things like that really did happen! And what kind of disturbed person would feel aroused by any of the brutal sex and violence that take place through the book? Some people dismiss books about WWII and the Holocaust because there are so many of them and they feel that after awhile, it's just repeating the same story over and over again, only with different names and locations. But this book is rather unique in the genre, in that there isn't one single scene in a death train, death march, ghetto, camp, not even the front lines. It's told by an unnamed young boy, only six years old when the Nazis invade his native Poland, who is shuttled from caretaker to caretaker. We don't even know if he's Jewish, a Gypsy, or neither. From hostile village to hostile village he goes, usually because he's been chased out by either the villagers themselves or the often cruel people he's been staying with. He learns early on to survive by his wits, in a superstitious world gone even madder with war. As an innocent, he cannot understand what is truly going on all around him, so there is none of the inner emotional and psychological turmoil we often see in other books about this time period. He finally comes to discover that being nice, staying out of the way, even constantly praying, didn't help him one iota. When he witnesses the scene between Ewka, Makar, Quail, and the goat in the barn, he realises what it means to be in league with the Devil and what evil is. The boy now knows that being nice didn't get him anywhere, and the only people he's been around who got things accomplished were evil, so he decides he must become evil too, become like one of his oppressors in order to succeed. It's understandable, given that he can barely remember anything but evil and suffering. And already he's become so traumatised by all he's gone through that he has just shut down and become a mute, though of course he's far too young to realise the reasons why that happened to him. And when the war finally ends, he has become so used to being evil and on the run that he doesn't know how to adjust to a normal life again, one of the great tragedies of any war. I don't know enough about the man to know whether or not Jerzy Kosinski was indeed guilty of plagiarism or lying about his life history, and if so, how much or how little, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a work of fiction, perhaps loosely based on his experiences as a young boy during the war. I'd see where critics get off had this been billed as a memoir, or a work of fiction said to be strongly based on his own life, but it remains a novel. If this is a fraud, then every fictional account of a historical event that really happened is a fraud too, as well as novels loosely based on something that may have happened in the author's own life. It's a powerful, moving, unforgettable book, whether it be fiction or partial autobiography.
Rating:
Summary: Lone Pole on the Run From the Gun
Review: This book might not be for you. Jerzy paints some wondrous pictures. Some people will say they're gross, offensive. Probably; but in my opinion The Painted Bird is probably the greatest single journey made by an unlikely hero (next to Cozzen's Castaway, and Greene's Power and the Glory). Sometimes artwork isn't the easiest thing to swallow, but mouthfuls like this are definetly nutritious.
Rating:
Summary: Unsentimental
Review: It's always irritated me when people talk about the Nazis and the period of the Second World War in general as though they were some kind of abberation, an inhuman evil which is rarely witnessed. As Kosinski shows us, cruelty is intrinsic, and any moral or lesson drawn by historians pales when compared with the incomprehensible reality of an event. The Polish villagers misreat the protagonist viciously while a Nazi soldier actually takes pity on him; rather than finding relief on his return to society, he is disgusted and coddled by it. The only largely good characters in the novel, the Russians, constantly harp on the goodness of Stalin (and we know the truth). World War Two may be more complex than anyone can ever show, but Kosinski admits that complexity as not many people have attempted to. I was surprised, also, by the sympathy that Kosinski develops for the protagonist. The kid is _tough_, simply, and there's something very endearing about it; also, the way he constantly tries to figure out the world, throwing in his lot with God, and then with the Devil, and then with the communists, is extremely relatable; it's the sort of conflict any child goes through. Viewed from a certain angle, it's just an incredibly twisted coming-of-age story.
Rating: 
Summary: lots of holes
Review: I have to confess, first off, that I didn't read this entire novel. In fact, I stopped at about chapter 6 or 7. I'm an avid reader, and usually don't mind long I.E. five hundred plus paged books. Perhaps I have no imagination, but the main reason I forebore to read the rest of this, is that there were too many unanswered questions for me, most importantly, how does this boy (we never learn his name) escape from each of his cruel caretakers? The author never shows him actually running away from the villages, except for the first one, and it's never made clear how he spends his days, or why certain people take him in, and others couldn't be bothered. I don't despise this book, but I'm definitely not a fan of spare writing, and this thing's certainly full of that. The violence and hints of deviant sexual behaviors weren't extremely off-putting either, although that long description of the gouging out and disposing of a youth's eye was more than a little nauseating.
Rating:
Summary: A response to Robert J. Crawford
Review: He, Jerzy, did not die because of lies, but because of aging. He hated getting old. The book, Painted Bird, is exceptional.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't believe in book burning, but ...
Review: ... if I did, this book might top my list. I made it past the story of the man spooning out another man's eyes and stepping on them, but when I got to the woman having a bottle of poop shoved up her and being kicked until it broke and then kicked some more -- that's when I gave up. This is the most disgustingly graphic book I've ever seen, and it's not as if it had a plot to make up for it. The whole point of the book (to where I read) seemed to be to shock the reader with wretched depictions. No thanks...
Rating:
Summary: The title tells all!
Review: It's been several years since reading this novel,but what I can say is that for the most part it was the title that helped define the book for me.Yes,it's a story about a young parentless Jewish boy that roams Eastern Europe during the second World War and does contain graphic depictions of somewhat gory scenes,but all to a purpose.The young boy is speechless and all throughout the story is encountering a variety of situations that is incomprehensible for someone his age,but still he struggles to define what surrounds him.The title in itself is very important for it is represented in the story.The youth encounters a bird catcher that uses the ploy of painting a bird of one species to capture that of a different species,which after discovering it's a painted bird pecks it to death.To me it was a metaphor for how the jewish population attempted to adapt to the harsh surroundings of the time period,but inevitably were sacrificed.Kosinski presents a complex portrayal of cruelty which unfortunately must be admitted as being a portion of the modern world where a holocaust has numbed us to the nuances of man's inhumanity.Kosinski's novel works on a variety of levels,but to me it is mainly addressing the question of identity and how one becomes defined by experiences.The novel is as complex as is the personality of Kosinski,who has written under several pseudonyms.The "Painted Bird" is a novel with very vivid descriptions that has a psychological hue to it that is unforgettable after reading!It can only help to broaden one's mental horizon and get a glimpse into another man's soul,be it ever so dark and brooding!
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