From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

The Winter Soldier

Daniel Mason

Start date: August 15, 2019

Finish date: September 1, 2019

Discussion: Reading List

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Oct 30, 2018 Ken rated it really liked it

Shelves: finished-in-2018, contemporary, historical-fiction

Inside the covers you'll find a map. Remember those? And such capital-R Romantic locations, too! Galicia, Cracow, the Carpathian Mountains, Budapest, Vienna, the Vistula and the Dnieper. Hungary's empire, you see, just before it all went kablooey.

I'm talking 1914. The War to End All Wars. And why, may I ask, is war so capital-R Romantic when it's in the rearview mirror? Isn't Hell hell from any angle? I thought so.

Anyway, what we have here is Dr. Zhivago Light, my friends. At 22, Lucius Krzelew Inside the covers you'll find a map. Remember those? And such capital-R Romantic locations, too! Galicia, Cracow, the Carpathian Mountains, Budapest, Vienna, the Vistula and the Dnieper. Hungary's empire, you see, just before it all went kablooey.

I'm talking 1914. The War to End All Wars. And why, may I ask, is war so capital-R Romantic when it's in the rearview mirror? Isn't Hell hell from any angle? I thought so.

Anyway, what we have here is Dr. Zhivago Light, my friends. At 22, Lucius Krzelewski of Poland hasn't even graduated from medical school when he is pressed into unexpected service by the tides of history. (Zhivago is facing the same deal a country or two over.)

Eventually, Lucius lands in Lemnowice (in his alliterative way), in a damaged church being used as a makeshift "hospital." Thing is, the old doctor is not in the house. Fled for the hills. So tough-as-church-nails Sister Margarete is beyond ecstatic to have Pan Doctor. Trouble is, the good nun knows more than this green "doctor" does. Still, there's nothing like on-the-job training and no lack of patient soldiers to practice it on. Amputations, chiefly. But the usual diseases, too: typhus, cholera, and the lot.

You don't need me to spell out that young Pan Doctor falls in love with young nun-of-that Margarete. There's nothing like taking off limbs together, after all. But falling in love with nuns---especially in close quarters around so many other men---is less than ideal. Still, points (and page turns) for trying.

Yes, yes. Plot. This is one of those "War and Peace (Read: War and Love)" books. Margarete as Lara. Lucius as Dr. Z, only without the domestic baggage (you know, a wife back home). But more than one person can harbor a secret, especially on the messy chessboards of war where every premeditated move must be kept secret.

Did I turn pages? Oh, yes. And enjoy the exotic locales? Decidedly. Did the plot hit some speed bumps along the way? And did a few landmines (I call them "eye-roll coincidences") detonate, too, with unfortunate results? Boy, howdy.

But I kept reading. And I felt, as I went, despite all that, that most others would buy-in big, too, many even 5-starring it as an "old-fashioned" type pleasure. Please, God, I hear these fellow readers saying, anything but another Yuppies in American Suburbia Tale! I'll take sawbones over navel-gazing solipsism any armistice of the week! (#metoo)

And so it went. Without regret. And with recommendations. If you feel like your emotions are being played like a harp as you read, oh well. Enjoy the music! And if you feel the author is crassly writing with film rights in mind, what can I say? Zhivago rode those rails, too. And the music was pretty. As was Julie Christie. Very. (But there I go again, revealing my own capital-R Romantic weaknesses. Easy to do when escapist literature is in such high demand, given goings-on in this World-To-End-All-Worlds appearing on a front page near you.) ...more

25 likes · Like · see review

Oct 30, 2018 Linda rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, signed, chcpl, historical-fiction, own, fiction, hardback

I love Daniel Mason's writing. This is the second of his books that I have read. As in "The Piano Tuner" this is a intrinsically well-researched book about a Polish medical student who is allowed to act as a Doctor during WW I because of a shortage of medical professionals. As he arrives at a church acting as a hospital he is further schooled by a Sister who, among other procedures, instructs him how to perform amputations.
Some of the descriptions are incredibly graphic, and not for every reader ...more

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Aug 27, 2019 Mary Ellen rated it really liked it

Shelves: wwi-related

The Winter Soldier is the story of Lucius, the son of wealthy Poles living in Vienna. Bored with the book-centered curriculum in medical school, he volunteers for the medical corps of the Austrian army a year or two into WWI. When he finally reaches the field hospital to which he has been assigned, he quickly realizes that he is the only "doctor" there, and that he is completely unprepared for the responsibilities thrust upon him.

The book recreated time and place vividly and Lucius is a very viv ...more

1 like · Like · see review