Janine di GiovanniCritiques

I began to read this book with a different perspective. I was to ask myself at the end of each chapter what I had learned. So I really paid attention and did not allow my mind to wander ..as much. What happened with this "experiment " was that it helped pull the elements of this non- fiction read into a deeper perspective. I learned that I had a lot in common with the writer. I have an alcoholic husband who has stopped drinking therefore causing me to stop drinking. It effects my life as much as it effected hers. And several other similarities. I noted a common thread in women, if not all, war correspondents. They feel invincible. They do not feel fear. They thrive on the adrenaline. They give voice to those who do not have a voice.
The book was good. A lot of Israel, a lot of war and the horrors always associated with war. Friendships are tenuous and short lived. Cut short by bullets, suicide, or burn out.
Extraordinary story. Very revealing. Took guts to put it all out there.½

Brutal yet simple accounts of what the Syrian people, both government-affiliated and not, have dealt with through this civil war. If you don't understand the Syrian Civil War, this is not a 101 that will explain it, BUT if you want accounts of what it's like, this is masterful.

This is a good book on the Balkan wars, but not the book that I wanted. I was looking for a general outline of the events in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. This book is much more personal. The style is punchy - short pieces related by individuals caught up in the appalling atrocities of the period. Participants appear in the text with no introduction, with no way of telling who they are or why they are being mentioned. There is no attempt to follow a chronology. But the writing is good; the content is compelling, heart-rending.
By the end I find myself better informed, but still feel a need for more information on the lead up to the events recounted. How could people become so incredibly inhumane to people who had been their neighbours, school friends, fellow workers? But I doubt that I will soon want to return to delve into this era of savagery and incomprehensible brutality.

Not to trivialize the pain of the victims mentioned in the book, but this book was very poorly written. It's a short book, and the chapters are repetitious.

I cannot decide on a rating for this book. I read about 2/3 of it and quit. The topic is so important and I want to better educate myself about Syria and the different groups of people there and the wars and atrocities that have happened in recent history. But, I just did not get along with the style of this book at all and I'm not entirely sure why. It jumped around a lot and the chapters felt disjointed and disorganized. It was hard to follow. It was ... anecdotes about atrocities. I wanted more context and depth.

A raw, heartbreaking glimpse into the lives of Syrian civilians. Interviews show the wide range of opinions and stances held by the Syrian people, from those in complete denial of the crisis to those who are unable to escape it. While Di Giovanni's effort to compile these stories and tidbits of history was an extremely dangerous and admirable endeavor, it occasionally feels a bit voyeuristic. Still, gave it the full four stars for impactful writing.

A short and brutal montage of first-person accounts about life in Syria from both sides by a brave journalist who traveled there, mostly during 2012-2014. She interviews torture victims, rape victims, soldiers, civilians, bakers, doctors, etc.. It mostly predates Russian intervention so it's out of date with current events, but it's not a history of war rather the words of those she interviews carries great impact.½

War correspondents have one of the hardest jobs - go where the bombs and bullets are flying and report about all the misery and pain. And Jeanine Di Giovanni is one of the veterans in that.

I've never read a book by her before although I know that I had seen a few of her articles. She had been everywhere - and that gives her a unique perspective at the first year of the Syrian war. And she uses it to write this book - and show that things do not change. Way too often when she describes a situation she compares it to what happened in Bosnia. Or in Iraq. It is heartbreaking to see the same mistakes happening again - and realizing that people are people no matter where - evil and good exist in every war, in every country.

The book is a mix between personal stories and official reports. It makes it a bit repetitive in the first part of the story - but then the style settles and gets very readable. The horrors and the misery and the hopelessness leak from every page - people are tortured sometimes without a reason, sometimes for what they believe. There is no winner in that first year of the war - the author ends up riding both with the Assad forces and with the Free Army - seeing the conflict from both sides. But she does not just report the war itself - she reports the lives of the ones that are the most vulnerable - the children, the women, the people that cannot defend themselves. In a culture where being a virgin is the only way to have a future, the men, the same men that will require virginity from their brides, are raping, ensuring that they are destroying lives even when they are not killing.

It is a hard book to read - a lot of the torture descriptions are graphical and you can hear the voices behind them. So are the stories of ruined lives and deaths - both of locals and of other journalists. It is not a book you want to read and yet it is a book that needs to be read. Because humanity is doomed to repeat the same mistakes until everyone realizes that this cannot continue.

This author is a war correspondent who writes about her experiences during the recent Syrian conflict. She describes how during the Arab Spring events in the Middle East people in Syria gathered to start a peaceful revolution that quickly changed into a civil war with no end in sight. The author looks at this situation from the perspective of the different parties involved, but the bottom line is that there are no winners here. It is a wonderfully insightful look at this tragic situation.

In this account of the war in Yugoslavia, Di Giovanni tries to explain the politics and factions at work here, the armies and paramilitary groups and the motivations behind their actions. I could not follow any of that, it is not her fault, she explains it very well, I just don't have a head for those kind of details. But in the interviews with the people affected, she interviews people from both sides of the conflicts, Serbians, Bosnains, Albanians and even some soldiers from Britain and France, you get the human story of the war, you see the madness of war.

She traveled extensively in the country, through dangerous areas, at one point she and some French colleagues thought they might be murdered by Serbians. She writes with candor and when she mentions destroying a notebook so her captors wouldn't find it, I could feel how tense the situation was.

I recommend this book.

In this account of the war in Yugoslavia, Di Giovanni tries to explain the politics and factions at work here, the armies and paramilitary groups and the motivations behind their actions. I could not follow any of that, it is not her fault, she explains it very well, I just don’t have a head for those kind of details. But in the interviews with the people affected, she interviews people from both sides of the conflicts, Serbians, Bosnains, Albanians and even some soldiers from Britain and France, you get the human story of the war, you see the madness of war.

She traveled extensively in the country, through dangerous areas, at one point she and some French colleagues thought they might be murdered by Serbians. She writes with candor and when she mentions destroying a notebook so her captors wouldn’t find it, I could feel how tense the situation was.

I recommend this book.

Deeply personal and moving memoir from a brilliant, evocative writer.