Stig Dalager - David's Story

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, if harrowing, story

I am rather wary of fictional works set during the Holocaust. One reason is that it is a subject of importance to me, but it has sometimes been used to lend a spurious air of gravitas to mediocre work which has been over-praised by critics out of of reverence for its subject matter. However, I thought David's Story a good book which painted a vivid, sometimes brilliant and often disturbing picture of those times.

The story - based on the accounts and diaries of children during this period - is about a young Jewish boy's experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The book is written (and excellently translated) in the present tense and in an unfussy, matter-of-fact style. Love and horror, acts of monstrous inhumanity and small, moving acts of kindness, for example, are all described in the same tone which gives the narrative a real drive and sense of immediacy which brings the events to life quite remarkably, particularly in the first half of the book. It is told almost exclusively from David's point of view, and one gets a real sense of his initial bewilderment and then his growing world-wisdom, pierced by his remaining humanity and child-like emotions. The cold, the fear, the hunger, the isolation and so on are quite brilliantly evoked.

Although I thought that the first part of the story was remarkably gripping and well told, the second section did begin to pall a little. Once David reaches the Warsaw Ghetto the narrative drive slackens and although we are given an excellent portrait of life in the ghetto, the style isn't as well suited to this more descriptive section, which felt less like a developing story and more like a rather fractured series of vignettes. Individually, many of them are excellently done but they hang together less well as a story and I found I was rather forcing myself on to the next one rather than being carried there. I also found the few brief sections told from other people's viewpoint a distraction, however important the point they were making.

Nevertheless, I still think this is a good book. It is a very involving story with genuine empathy and real quality of thought which has important things to say. Recommended.