The Fifth Son : A novel

Rating:
Summary: Good Book a tough read
Review: The Fifth Son is a novel about a son who grows close to his father over a long period of time. I thought that it was a good book because it was told from a couple points of view. This is what also made it a tough read. The story is told through a jewish boy who wants to get close to his father. The father remains distant, but he writes these letters to his son, which to me makes the book confusing because the point of view tends to switch between the father and the son. Each wanting to grow close to one another but not knowing how to express themself in the right way. The story also gets confusing because the setting always switches back to Europe during WWII in this Jewish ghetto of which the jewish boys' father is the president of a Jewish council. Over all it was a pretty good book and I would recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Read
Review: Wiesel writes with the voice of a poet in this complex novel. It is told from the point of view of a Jewish young man who is trying desperately to understand his father, a Holocaust survivor. The young man, who is never named, wants to know everything he can about his father's experiences, and he slowly begins to gain information through his father's friends and through the letters he discovers, written by his father to his son Ariel. The book begins in a sequence that is confusing in the manner of a poem; it eventually becomes clearer as the themes of the book are developed. The young man is going to visit Germany to meet up with his father's past and somehow come to terms with it. He struggles with hate and forgiveness, and ultimately meets up with his father's past, and his own obsession, in a confrontation that tests his courage and helps him approach some sort of peace.