Edel Rodriguez
For the NY Times Book Review
NOVEMBER 18, 2008
Final art
Sketches
Final art
"Veteran British biographer and novelist Wilson's plodding latest concerns the private life of Adolf Hitler (Wolf) and his friendship and affair with Winnie, the daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner. The novel opens in 1925 and is composed by an unnamed secretary to Winnie's husband. Though weighted down by detailed discussions of philosophy and the opera that so inspired Hitler, the narrative at times hums with life. Wilson offers a new way of viewing the charismatic (though sweating and flatulent) leader, who appears to the Wagner family as the savior who will raise up a starving and humiliated interwar Germany and who made you feel that the struggle would not have been worth it unless it had gone too far."
Sketches
© 2024 Edel Rodriguez