Love Without Resistance

This novella by Gilles Rozier could have been very good had it been written by a very good writer. It has some interesting themes - the protagonist's inability to resist the Nazi occupation and her guilt over that, for example - but sadly this guy just doesn't do it justice.

I read a review about this book and the whole way through it called the protagonist "he"; which is pretty funny, partly because the main character is a woman, but partly because really, you wouldn't know it. Basically Rozier has reluctantly made her female because otherwise she'd be in the war, but really you can tell he'd prefer to write about a man, and that he hasn't a clue about women . . . the thing that jumped out at me was the vague reference to explicit pornography being passed around her girls' school. Maybe a boys' school, but it's a bit ridiculous idea for girls.

Anyway, this story is written in a really distant vague tone from beginning to end. There's no change, to sense of climax, no use of language to vary anything at all. You can't really care about anyone, and as for love - there's no feeling evoked at all. Lots of explicit sex scenes, but that's it. It's full of German and Yiddish poetry (only translated at the back of the book, which stops the flow of it all for me at least), and no surprise that Rozier is a specialist in Yiddish literature. It feels like it's been dumped in there, though he gives adequate reason (the Jewish guy she's hiding in her cellar speaks Yiddish and knows her favourite German poems in that language). Interesting, or it could have been if it had been written more fully and more movingly.