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Rating: 
Summary: Major disappointment
Review: John Wray's novel is one of a number of new works that focus on the Holocaust from a different angle than the classic survivor memoirs or fictions that relate the experiences of the persecuted (see "Hester Among the Ruins" and "The Dark Room," for example). "The Right Hand of Sleep" is set in pre-World War II Austria and relates the story of a love triangle formed by a World War I deserter, a young Austrian woman, and her former lover, now an SS Commander. The title comes from a poem and hints at the troubles caused when one tries to return home. The novel's protagonist, Oskar Voxlauer, returns to his small hometown in Austria in 1938, more than 20 years after he deserted the German Army. Having made his "separate peace" in one war that he could not accept, he finds himself enmeshed a new war-about-to-be that he also cannot accept. The novel's antagonist, the young SS Commander, also discovers trouble awaits upon his return home from a stay in Germany. Despite this promising situation, the novel disappoints in almost every way. It has little narrative momentum to propel a reader, and, unfortunately, its characters remain fairly opaque at the same time. It becomes difficult to care about either the story or the characters in this novel. The flashbacks that flesh out the antagonists' political history are the book's only redeeming quality, as they provide a glimpse into Europe's major political upheavals in the early twentieth century as experienced by two fairly ordinary Austrians. It's difficult to see who the readers for Wary's novel might be. It's clearly not eventful enough to appeal to war fiction devotees, but it's also not successful enough to satisfy the reader of literary fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than a sleeping pill
Review: The most boring, rambling book I've ever read. Was Wray being paid by the word? If you have problems falling to sleep, this is the remedy. I have issues with buying a book and not completing it, both as a courtesy to the author and as a return on my investment. This book is the exception. I managed to make it through 150+ pages of a 300+ page novel and dozed off so many times that my chin bruised my chest. This is easily the best sleep aid on my bookshelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Ambitious and Fine First Novel
Review: This is a very good novel about Austria in the late 1930s. The protagonist is a man returning from almost 20 years exile in the Soviet Union, a former deserter from the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army. He returns to the small rural town where he grew up and where his mother still lives. There, he becomes caught in the Nazi seizure of power and in a romantic triangle that involves a local woman and the local Nazi leader. The treatment of the hero, his life, and his personal entanglements have strong allegorical aspects related to Austrian history in the first half of the 20th century. Accompanying these allegorical elements are sustained efforts at a complex psychological novel involving analysis of both the hero and this opponent. Finally, there is a good deal of outstanding descriptive writing describing the local countryside. This is a dense and ambitious work with a great deal to recommend it. At times, however, all the elements don't cohere. Some of the psychological elements sometimes seem unfocused. As noted above, this is the first published novel by John Wray and I look forward to reading his work in the future.
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