Painted Bird Review

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cruelty and brutality follow a Jewish child hiding out with Polish peasants during the Second World War. Overworked, beaten, the boy often runs away only to find his next home is basically identical to the one he just escaped. Author Jerzy Kosinski, who survived German savagery in Eastern Europe, made his tale fictional because it "forces the reader to contribute: he does not simply compare [as in autobiography]; he actually enters a fictional role, expanding it in terms of his own experience, his own creative and imaginative powers."

That said, the story was indeed relentless in its violent depictions, highlighted by a ruthless German attack on a village and the stomach-turning barbarities inflicted on a helpless populace. But after a time, you're almost numbed to the horrors  because they're always there. In the aftermath of the war, we see Warsaw become Lord of the Flies at night as parentless children, used to living on their wits, run in gangs, taking what they will.

A raw look at a slice of the Second World War unknown to most Western readers. And while well-written, with a note of hope at the end, it batters you with humanities' dark side.


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