A Thread of Grace Reviews

• Strangely touching....

  
  By A23US54A0OILE4 on 2005-02-10
  I've read Mary Doria Russells other books, The Sparrow and Children of God and enjoyed both. I was a bit skeptical when I read the jacket material on Thread of Grace. Well, I should have known better. Thread of Grace is a tremendously well written and well researched novel. You will remember reading this book far into the future.
  
  Thread of Grace is well written but very busy with crossing storylines. You may indeed need a list to keep things straight. Ms Russell pays great attention to detail in both her description of the physical location of the story (NW Italy) and in the characters she includes in the story. It is this detail that may overwhelm the casual reader.
  
  The premise of the story, that there is a safe haven in Italy for Jews as they try to hide from their ultimate slaughter by the Nazi's is a compelling one. And it is true. The characters, a Jewish Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, the Italians of the region, and the Germans (collectively) face the moral and ethical dilemma all humans face in war. Russell does an excellect job dealing with the whole war/morality issue without preaching one way or the other.
  
  Truly a worthwhile book. Get it and read it. I suspect we'll hear from Russell again.
  
  

• fabulous complex historical tale

  
  By AFVQZQ8PW0L on 2005-02-02
  By the fall of 1943, European Jews not in death camps or murdered seek sanctuaries in places like Italy's Piedmont Province though this area as a refugee haven remains questionable. The small village of Porto Sant'Andrea is home for Italian Jews led by Rabbi Soncini, Italian Catholics led by Father Tomitz, and the occupying German army represented by Doktor Schramm. Into this mix come non-Italian Jews especially from occupied France.
  
  The three prime groups in the village have a tentative peaceful co-existence, but the influx of newcomers places that in jeopardy. The Italian Jews want to welcome their mostly religious kin with open arms. Father Tomitz sets the tone for his followers by providing shelter for the Jews. While Doktor Shramm hides with drink from his murdering almost 100,000 people of which he can account for seemingly everyone, the German leaders blindly follow orders to carry out the Final Solution. Into this volatile situation come the allies.
  
  A THREAD OF GRACE is a fabulous complex historical tale (not sci fi as Mary Doria Russell's' two previous works are) that brings alive a dark era through seemingly real people. The story line is fast-paced with multiple subplots that add to the depth and the feel of 1943 Italy. With plenty of tidbits and multifaceted perspectives, the amazing part remains the ensemble cast regardless of national origin or religion which all seem so genuine; for instance the plight of a French Jew with his daughter struggling to cross the Alps to Italy is breathtaking. World War II readers will want to read this slice of an odious era where lights of courageous kindness existed.
  
  Harriet Klausner
  
  
  

• Gracefully woven

  
  By AAZYGU02RNNQJ on 2005-02-06
  Unlike Ms. Russell's previous works, "Thread of Grace" takes place in the past, not the future. Incredibly well-researched, it begins with Italy's armistice with the Allies, which is not good news for the Jewish people living in Italian-occupied territories. Accompanied by retreating Italians, they flee for Italy, only to discover, soon after, that the Germans have mostly taken control of Italy, too.
  
  Italian Jews and foreign refugees must all go into hiding, many assisted by Italian Catholics, and a few Italian Jews who hide in plain sight. We also meet many of the German officers who control the small, fictionalized area of Italy in which the story takes place.
  
  Just like "The Sparrow" and "Children of God", however, Ms. Russell's characters are wonderfully crafted, and the story is told in a remarkably beautiful manner. Faith, philosophy, humor, warmth, despair, and humanity are all wrapped up in one moving, poignant package.
  
  

• An absorbing, generously proportioned novel

  
  By A2F6N60Z96CAJI on 2005-02-06
  I'm a Jew from a family so assimilated that I never set foot in a synagogue until I was almost 40. Yet it is part of my identity in a way that has nothing to do with religious observance, and throughout my life it has struck me with particular force when confronting the Holocaust --- reading Anne Frank's diary; seeing the movie Judgment at Nuremberg; weeping at Yad Vashem, the museum and memorial in Jerusalem. Being Jewish makes me feel proud, different, and vulnerable all at the same time.
  
  A THREAD OF GRACE is part of that tragic narrative, but a more obscure one. Set in the ports and valleys of northwestern Italy (Aosta, Piemonte, Liguria) during the last two years of World War II, it tells the story of Jews, 43,000 of them --- both native-born Italians (of which there were many; the Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in Europe) and refugees from eastern Europe --- whose lives were saved by ordinary citizens. Russell, who calls herself "a Jew by choice and an Italian by heritage" (she is a convert, though she doesn't give details), seems the ideal writer to bring this piece of history to life, and she does it beautifully in an absorbing, generously proportioned novel.
  
  This is the kind of book you need to read with a cheat sheet because there are so many personalities and interwoven story lines (Russell considerately provides a cast of characters; I could have used some maps, too). There are the Italian Jews, particularly the chief rabbi, Iacopo Soncini, and his wife, Mirella; and Renzo Leoni, a hardened former pilot who has as many identities as he has scars, and his mother, Lidia. There are the Italian Catholics: priests, nuns, and ordinary farmers and peasants who help shield the Jews --- and a big, innocent Calabrian infantryman who marries one. There is the Jewish refugee contingent, especially a Belgian teenager named Claudette Blum --- families who, as the story opens in 1943, are making their way across the Maritime Alps from southeastern France to Italy, which has just surrendered to the Allies. Unfortunately, Italy only seems safer: Mussolini's ouster sets up two years of bitter fighting among Germans, Allies, and partisans. A British Special Ops signalman parachutes in to gather information on the ground. Nazi officers try vainly but brutally to stabilize the area for Hitler. And a renegade German doctor, Werner Schramm, who presided over the vilest concentration camp experiments, is slowly dying of guilt, drink, and tuberculosis.
  
  The book is, I admit, a bit heavy on "types" familiar from World War II movies: the selfless religious, the noble peasant, the apparent cynic who is a secret hero, and so forth. Indeed, there is an old-fashioned flavor to the whole novel --- the way Italian or German or Hebrew words are thrown in to indicate which language is being spoken; the stately pace; the headings that tell you precisely where and when the action is taking place. A THREAD OF GRACE doesn't reinvent the war novel as THE ENGLISH PATIENT did, with its spare language and mysterious shifts between myth and reality, past and present. But the author's emotional commitment to her characters is such that they soon grow on you, transcending cliché and laying claim to your heart.
  
  Russell was originally a paleoanthropologist --- a scientist who studies human fossils --- and the training shows in her meticulous portrait of the region and its people. Although her previous books, THE SPARROW and its sequel, CHILDREN OF GOD, are science fiction, the methodology was similar: She invented an entire alien culture, building it up in brilliant, believable detail. (These earlier works, by the way, are fascinating, suspenseful, and altogether wonderful; grab them even if you don't ordinarily like the genre). There is a scientist's mind at work here as well as a novelist's imagination.
  
  There is also a challenging ethical complexity to A THREAD OF GRACE. Russell does not preach or sentimentalize (which is easy to do in the face of the Italians' courage and self-sacrifice), and she doesn't glorify war; rather, she underscores its moral ambiguities. Werner Schramm, for example, is a walking, talking human monster, but he began as an idealist. Renzo Leoni is guilty of killing civilians, too, though on a lesser scale: In 1935, during the Italian-Abyssinian war, his squadron famously bombed a civilian hospital, and he is tortured by the memory. When local partisans show no mercy to captured Nazi officers, Renzo knows the massacre is wrong, but unstoppable. "I've sworn off ethics," he says afterward. "What's the point?" A THREAD OF GRACE, like THE SPARROW and CHILDREN OF GOD, is powerfully (though not didactically) imbued with a plea for cultural and religious understanding --- to respect what is radically different in other societies and faiths, while embracing what we have in common.
  
  The evocative title comes from a remark by Rabbi Soncini at the book's end. "There's a saying in Hebrew," he says. " 'No matter how dark the tapestry God weaves for us, there's always a thread of grace.' " Mary Doria Russell's novel is a bit like a great textile --- rich and broad and intricately figured --- and in its design there is a glint of something like hope. These days, we could use it.
  
  --- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
  
  

• Mary Doria Russell - A THREAD OF GRACE

  
  By A6F61DLQJEURB on 2006-08-20
  WWII, Mussolini had surrendered Italy to Hitler. Disillusioned where this war was going A small group of Italian Soldiers part of the resistance had taken it upon themselves to save the lives of Jewish refugees from the work camps and execution from Nazi soldiers by escorting them on an arduous journey through a mountain pass, selflessly sacrificing there lives to save others. Along the way Italian citizens just ordinary people all learning to survive the horrors of War and its brutality, they extended their hand of friendship. In many cases showing peoples different sides of good and evil, which at times could be heartbreaking.
  
  This is the first book I've read written by Mary Doria Russell, it was given to me and it turned out to be a wonderful surprise. Ms Russell had spent five years researching to find the essence to this engrossing story. Based on the true story of the Italian resistance who were to have saved ten of thousands of jews during the final phases of the second world war. Although this book is fictional, the plot is strong, vivid characters and many emotional tragedies. The only drawback would be some parts could be confusing, there are a lot of characters racing through this book with many different view points to keep track of, but if you can grasp it and keep track of it, this is a beautiful read. It's a wonderful achievement.
  
  A.Bowhill
  
  
  
• A Thread of Grace: A Review
  By A2RGKCJQ8PQF2K on 2005-03-07
  The novel, A Thread of Grace, is an attempt to recreat a time period and characters who seem somewhat foreign in their behaviors and attitude and especially their lives. It is long past time for this story to be told, before the people and events are forgotten.
  At first, the large cast of characters, many with more than one name, made for difficult reading. Once I got through this, the novel grabbed my interest and I read in in one day. I alternated from quiet moments of philosophical debate (What would I do in this situation?) to times of intense sadness at what mankind is capable of rationalizing as for the common good.
  All in all, this novel is a must, and I highly recommend it.
  Dianne Shames
  
  
• Sadly Disappointed
  By A3VGGLLEW4KHIM on 2005-03-02
  Having read both The Sparrow and Children of God, I've been eagerly awaiting A Thread of Grace for several years. Unfortunately, I have to agree with some of the negative reviews. I had a difficult time getting interested, what with the large cast of characters and the constant change of locations, but I believe the main downfall was the sense of detachment I had toward the characters. I began to enjoy the book after 50 pages or so, falling into its rhythm, eagerly wanting to know more about Claudette, Mirella and Renzo, yet as I continued reading, I never felt emotionally drawn in to any of their lives. Unlike The Sparrow, with its memorable cast of characters, I'm afraid all but one or two of A Thread of Grace's characters will fade from my memory in the months to come. I'm not sorry I read the book, for I learned a great deal about the Italian resistance to the Germans during World War II, but I am sorry it didn't live up to my expectations. Having said that, The Sparrow was my favorite read for 1997 and maybe it's time to pull it from the shelf and give it another read.
  
  
• Coudn't connect
  By A2RZ9O4PSL16V4 on 2005-02-16
  I really wanted to like this book...I thought I would find it interesting because of the subject matter, something I was not that familiar with, Italians helping the Jews in World War II. But I just couldn't connect. The writing was beautiful, dense, moody, but I just couldn't connect with the characters. I tried to keep reading hoping I would finally feel something, but I think the characters were there to move the story, rather than the story there to move the characters. So, the story was interesting, the characters wooden. Sorry Ms. Russell, but I seem to disagree with all the other reviewers.
  
  
• No Grace Here
  By A3A7ZNFQ0GIWRB on 2005-02-21
  I had been looking forward to this novel since the author first announced that she was writing it. The Sparrow is one of the best books I've ever read, and my recollections of its characters remain so warm and vivid it's as if they were people I had worked beside for years.
  
  A Thread of Grace was a disappointment. Its heroes and its villains are for the most part unreflective and lack dimension, and the novel's focus and viewpoint shift too rapidly to make all but a few of these people matter.
  
  Please stop reading here if you don't wish to be told anything about the ending.
  
  Like the jacket copy, which tells us that Italians saved the lives of 43,000 Jews during World War II, the title led me to anticipate a different story. Never did I expect that before the book was over all but one of the major characters - and nearly all of the minor ones - would be killed. But the author wasn't content with this. In a coda that I am tempted to call vicious, we see the single surviving major character on her deathbed in 2007, surrounded by her children who misjudge and despise her.
  
  How bitterly ironic! I found no grace here.
  
  
  
  
  
• A Thread of Grace
  By A3TUD7DNPEFVHU on 2005-03-03
  Absolutely breathtaking....Characters that will haunt you long after the last page of the book.
  Set in World War II Northern Italy, Mary Russell follows the lives of several Jewish families escaping the wrath of Nazi Germany only to find that the arms of Germany reach far into the boarders of Italy. Share their triumphs and tradgedy as Mary Russell weaves a Thread of Grace!
  
  
• Grace and Courage
  By A3NLJZI5NEOT0K on 2005-04-12
  I received A Thread of Grace as a gift, and am so glad it came my way. This is a beautiful story, based upon real people and actual events, beautifully told. Learning how hundreds of Italian citizens, ordinary people, survived the horrors of war and Nazi brutality, and selflessly extended the hand of friendship to those whom they perceived as even more persecuted, was an inspirational experience. Ms Russell's narration is flowing and compelling, and she succeeds in finding and illuminating the humanity in all her characters, including those once guilty of atrocity. There is so much courage in this world that goes unnoticed and unsung. This is a story worth telling.
  
  
• A Winner!
  By A21NVBFIEQWDSG on 2005-06-01
  Mary Doria Russell is a phenomenon - and with her newest book, A Thread of Grace, it becomes impossible to label Russell as a 'certain type' of writer. She seems to write what interests her, and as a result her passion shows.
  
  Russell's historical novel, A Thread of Grace is set during WWII. Jewish refugees are being escorted to safety by Italian soldiers. But the sense of security in settling into a small Italian town, protected by its inhabitants, is short-lived when it is learned that Mussolini has surrendered to the Germans.
  
  A Thread of Grace follows the lives of several characters: an Italian resistance leader, a priest, an Italian rabbi's family and a German doctor. Through these characters we discover the truth of the Italian underground, a movement that saved over 40,000 Jewish people during the war.
  
  Russell is a marvelous writer and storyteller. The intensity with which she writes is staggering. Her plot is complex and well researched, her prose is fluid and compelling and her characters are so wonderfully human. She is one of my favorite authors and A Thread of Grace is even better than The Sparrow and Children of God.
  
  
  
• No Character Development
  By A1I66HAUT3Y6V4 on 2005-07-16
  I was really disappointed in this novel. For me, the main problem was the constant jumping around from place to place with only a few pages in each place and then on to another place with different characters. As a reader of many WW2 and holocaust novels, I found this book completely lacking in anything to make me care about how bad the Nazis were or to love the partisans and the Jews. It became hard work to actually finish this novel.
  
  
• Serious historical fiction
  By AATQGPIGIKOXB on 2005-11-28
  I'm with the reviewers that really enjoyed the big, bold complexity of this novel. Yes, there are a lot of characters and at times their stories are quite diffuse. You can't always be sure how they connect or feel that it's guaranteed that they do connect. But such is life.
  
  This is a literary-quality novel. I love it for that. I think the character development is complex and specific, but also reveals the mystery/conflict within people. In a way you have to work a little here. Some readers seem to think that means the characters aren't deep. I think it's just the opposite. They're as deep as you have the capacity to imagine them.
  
  It's a shame that the big historical novel is often thought of as romance, or even fantasy. There are plenty of books like that out there. This isn't one of them. It's a serious read by a serious writer, one who loves her characters but is also honest enough about life to put them through horrowing episodes from our human history. It reminded me of Sebastian Faulks' novel about the first world war, Birdsong. Nick Arvins' Articles of War is much smaller, but also an interesting look at WWII. Here's to top writers that aren't afraid to take on dramatic stories!
  
  
• Elegant and elegiac.
  By A30KEXFT9SILL6 on 2006-03-13
  Russell is swiftly becoming one of my favorite working authors. She has a knack of working within and beyond genre conventions to create something really exceptional each time.
  
  Russell first came to my attention with her science fiction novels The Sparrow and Children of God. In those books, traditional science fiction territory became a structure through which she was able to examine notions of sainthood, goodness and godliness.
  
  With A Thread of Grace, Russell is returning to familiar territory despite the shift in genre. A Thread of Grace avoids the worst excesses of historical fiction to consider the very difficult problem of goodness and evil in extreme circumstances. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of her treatment of Italy during the years 1943 to 1945 is that you never have the feeling that the characters in the book "earn" their fates. People are good or evil in a way that is disconnected from how or if they die. This is, to my mind, a very smart and brave thing to do as a writer.
  
  I read in an interview that Russell had her son flip a coin to determine the ultimate fate of her characters. If true, I applaud it as a method. One of the worst things that historical fiction does is to use terrible events as a kind of prop in the personal destiny of its characters. If there is a lesson in the horror of the Holocaust it seems to be that survival is random. If you survive, you should thank God or whoever assisted you, but you should not see it as any kind of particular reward or evidence of goodness.
  
  Russell is an accomplished writer. Her sentences are spare and well-crafted. I had some issues with the structure of the book. I found some of the jumps in time and character too much or too complex. Still, these faults were not serious enough to hurt the general reading experience. Despite its grim tone, A Thread of Grace is one of those rare books that is literally very hard to put down at night.
  
  I would recommend A Thread of Grace for anybody who is a fan of historical fiction, particularly works set during World War II. However, I believe that the novel is strong enough to appeal to people who are not fans of the genre already. Fans of Russell may miss some of the science fiction elements of her first two books (since she did them so well), but should remain confident that the basic elements hold true. "A Thread of Grace" might also be a good way to describe the red line in her body of work to date.
  
  Highly recommended.
  
  
• Somewhat disappointing
  By A82H2R7JJOBM7 on 2006-06-28
  Thread of Grace was fairly enjoyable, but could have used a heavier editing hand. Not that I expected a happy ending, but after all the great effort, faith and hope, it would have been nice to feel someone had a future. No chance for a sequel here. Thank goodness for the maps and cast listings! The locations and action change constantly while time moves forward and backward, sometimes by the hour, sometimes by the season. Some characters are cartoonish and stereotyped; to a man, the Germans are standard Hollywood version, nasty and cold-blooded (with the exception of a deserter doctor who finds a conscience, although he's really never likeable). Storylines end improbably: one of the main characters, a twelfth-generation Jewish resident of the fictional Porto Sant'Andrea, who seems to know everyone and have contacts everywhere, is hung as a traitor at the end by fellow citizens who somehow don't recognize him ("...if I'd skipped that goddamned haircut..." he thinks.) On the positive side, the author presents a good overview of the progression of the war and its impact on Italy. It's obvious Ms. Russell did a great amount of research.
  
  After scanning the other reviews for this book, it seems that most readers chose it because they enjoyed the author's previous novels. I bought this book to take with me on a recent vacation to Italy. After many trips there, I've become interested in the impact WWII had on its people and landscapes. If you are looking for a good book on this subject, I recommend a similar but much better written account of Italian citizens' experiences: "War in Val D'Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944" by Iris Origo, which takes place near Pienza and Montepulciano in Tuscany and tells of the efforts of one family and local farmers to help refugees, orphaned children, British POWs, Italian partisans, and deserters, as well as their dealings with fascist polititians and German troops (who actually seem human at times). It's wonderful to read if you are travelling to Tuscany, with the additional bonus of being able to see many of the locations and sights written about, including the exceptional formal gardens at the Origo's house, La Foce, which was repared and rebuilt after the war. Also good is the English translation of famous Italian writer Beppe Fenoglio's "The Twenty-three Days of the City of Alba" about the partisans' seizure and defense of a town in the Piemonte, not far from the ToG location.
  
  
• Unforgettable characters ...
  By APW5BCY1IOL3K on 2005-03-28
  The every-day heroics of this period and place are astounding. With only an inch-deep understanding of the intricacies of World War II, I became some lost in the fog of war mid-book (perhaps by author intention?) but find myself now, some 10 days after finishing, still thinking about several of the characters (in book talk) who became ever so real people (in my mind). Not an easy read but worth time and attention. I'm glad Mary Doria Russell is young, with many years of writing ahead.
  
  
• Better than The Sparrow!
  By A13UPXTPG5NFTS on 2005-04-16
  Until I read A Thread of Grace, I might have chosen The Sparrow as my all-time favorite book of any genre. (When describing The Sparrow, I tell people it's about "Jesuits in space.")
  
  But A Thread of Grace has all the fine character development and engrossing storyline of her previous books, plus it is grounded in a very real, accurately portrayed, place and time.
  
  My uncle, a Polish Jew who spent part of his childhood in a concentration camp, and then traveled in Italy shortly after the end of the war, says that she really captures the difference in the way Italians treated the Jews. He recounted several incidents from his own and relatives experiences that could have come right from the pages of the book.
  
  Even if were not as accurate and as carefully researched as it is, this would be an incredible novel in its own right! If I were dictator of the world, I'd make everyone read it.
  
  
• Extraordinary, moving, and important
  By A1GFJM31VFAWWF on 2005-05-01
  This novel tells the intertwining stories of European Jews, Italian Catholics, and a German army doctor who, in the last two years of WWII, choose life in the face of seemingly unconquerable death. It is by turn funny, heart-wrenching, sickening, and uplifting. Russell masters character development like no other author, so that I felt as if I personally knew each person introduced. If you liked Russell's science fiction novels, which are essentially stories of human beings and their faiths rather than space ships and aliens, you will find a similar spirit in this historical tale.
  
  I also believe this book could be an excellent novel for a high school history, religion, or English class, despite some foul language (perfectly appropriate for the context) and violence. It brings home the atrocities of the German Final Solution much more directly than a dry history text book, inspires diligence in keeping similar things from happening again, and encourages respect and love across religious/cultural/racial divides.
  
  I listened to the audio version and found the reader excellent and engaging.
  
  
• Just okay. . .
  By A3VVJZH062BXNQ on 2005-05-02
  This book is well written but there are too many characters to keep track of and none of these individuals have enough depth to create any connection with the reader.
  
  I guess with the sad and disturbing subject matter being described, it's easier to handle if you're indifferent to the characters. . .
  
  
• An Artful Novel
  By A100UZ3LRLU135 on 2005-07-09
  When I opened the cover of this book which I read for my bookclub, I was nervous. Not only was there a map of Northern Italy, but there was a list of several pages of characters whose names seemed vaguely similar. I thought, "Oh, here we go. I never like when I need roadmaps to read a story..." Yet immediately I was plunged into a tale so tragic but joyful, complex and yet simple at the same time, I was hooked.
  
  This is not what I would consider an easy read. I spent a good deal of time going back to read a page again because the pace of the novel is, at times, feverish. But I am always a fan of the novel as an experience and this book gave that to me. I emotionally reacted to the characters, at times I felt as out of breath as they were, sometimes I was confused. But in the end, I grew to love them as people. To me this is a testament to the fullness of their portraits drawn by a skillful, if at times ambitious, writer.
  
  In the middle of reading this novel I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Doria Russell, so perhaps this skews my review positively, but that doesn't make me change it. Based on my experience with her earlier work, this one makes me a full member of her fan club. MDR comes into her own through these clever people who knew such pain and terror but also love and life.
  
  Usually, I base my rating of a book on whether I would actually sit down and read the entire thing a second time. With this one, I emphatically would. MDR deserves all the praises she gets for this intricately-woven story.
  
  
• Not up to the challenge
  By A2EBCTK5IBLP39 on 2005-10-12
  Overall, this was a disappointment. The potential for a great novel was there, but it suffered due to poor execution. Writing in the multi-character perspective is challenging for the best of writers, unfortunately Mary Doria Russell wasn't up to the challenge. The novel is very fragmented and choppy. I'm still a fan of the author and the concept was good, best of luck on the next one (I hope it doesn't take another 7 years).
  
  
• A fictional Account of WWII Italy: The People, Their Struggle, The Politics
  By A2W4T3C6A2SLRU on 2005-12-24
  This book is best described as an historical account that brings the reader to World War II in Northwestern Italy. Through a variety of political perspectives, the author was able to portray an array of characters that brought into focus the goodness and ills of humanity with something akin to gentleness and 'grace'. I was reminded of the book My English Patient (M. Ondaatje), which only hinted at much of what becomes starkly real in wartime Italy through the telling of this story.
  Russell provides her readers with a numbing sense of the futility of war and its enormous tolls, in her comments at the end of the book. It gives nothing of the story away to share her statement, "The last survivors (of this war) are dying now. Their children and grandchildren are the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy that the dry bones shall live again, but the poison still seeps down, contaminating generations. So much evil. So much destruction." She was able to depict this very image through the story she so carefully and fully brings it to life. She mentions Hitler infrequently and then only with an eerie and unearthly eloquence.
  The book is hauntingly felt and viscerally experienced through her characters. It is one that will linger on as a whisper in your mind. It will likely sneak up on you in the middle of your day, connecting you to something deeper. It's well worth your time.
  
  
• Well researched, beautifully written, haunting, and inspiring
  By A261QCG89VP6HD on 2006-10-13
  I received this book for Christmas last year by my husband who bought it based on its cover. It is so well-written, I had a hard time putting it down. The characters are so interesting (thank you for including the character list in the beginning which helped me keep everybody straight) and the setting was so unfamiliar to me (thanks for the maps) I found it very compelling. Yes, it is filled with sadness and even though I was hopeful for the happy ending that wasn't there, I was really inspired by the story. This novel is gut-wrenching and achingly sad, but the feelings you're left with after reading it should make it required reading. I wish I could teach this novel in a high school language arts class.
  
  
• Great--but one complaint: too complex!
  By A19DME32B51LHE on 2005-02-28
  An excellent book, but there are a lot of main characters and the writer switches viewpoints way too often. It gets confusing!
  
  
• Sweeps away our WWII stereotypes and preconceptions
  By A1APADGSYP6TTH on 2005-04-25
  Authors are often known for their mastery of a genre; novel, biography, history, science fiction. Mary Doria Russell, on the other hand, uses genre as a tool, choosing just the right way to communicate with her reader. Her first two novels use the science fiction genre so that we will not assume anything about the charachters (or the world) she describes. By doing so, we discover new ways to look at the human condition and our own capacity for love, fear, hate and death.
  
  With the years of detailed research and scores of interviews conducted it would have been easy for Ms. Russell to have penned a history of North Western Italy in the last years of World War II. A non-fiction accounting, however, could easily have left the reader lost in the facts and numbers and failed to convey the human story that has gone largely untold these past 60 years.
  
  Instead, A Thread of Grace introduces us to fictional charachters and places that are composites created from the very real people she met and learned about, and the very real places she visited during her research for this extraordinary novel. The result is an historical accounting in which all the good and bad of the human spirit are placed on display for the reader to consider. It should be impossible to read this novel without recognizing pieces of our own psyche in each and every charachter and wondering what we would do to survive and protect or families and loved ones.
  
  Those who believe that A Thread of Grace is a departure from Ms. Russell's science fiction works, ('The Sparrow' and 'Children of God') miss the point of all three novels. Ms. Russell ignores all stereotypes and through her story and charachters has us examine the very depths of the human capacity for both good and evil. Had Ms. Russell chosen a different genre as a vehicle for telling this tale, the reader could not experience the agony of unexplained loss, the turmoil of a world gone mad, the compassion of individuals, or the affect of these experiences on survivors.
  
  A Thread of Grace will have you wondering about many things (including its characters) long after you have turned the last page.
  
  
• Thread of Grace -- Truly Beautiful!
  By A3KUQAQ6VDB8N2 on 2006-06-21
  For those of you who read The Sparrow by this author, you may be surprised by the subject matter, but not by the style. The Sparrow is, of course, a futuristic somewhat dystopian science fiction planetary travel tale. Thread of Grace is about Northern Italian Peasants helping Jewish refugees hide from the Germans in Northern Italy during the latter part of World War II. Like The Sparrow, it is filled with rich writing, moments of humor, highly developed characters, and technical prowess regarding the subject matter. It is also, like The Sparrow, very sad. One person I was sitting next to at a pool made sure I knew how much she hated this book when she saw I was reading it. The book is complex, technical, and realistically sad. It is not a traditional form of esacape, and it is not light reading.
  
  For those, however, who enjoy to be absorbed into human experience in an intensely volatile and tragic time in history, this book is profound. Russell is a master at drawing her characters so real you can almost touch and smell them. She weaves brilliant observation on human nature and the dynamics of complex relationships into a tale that makes us explore moral questions to an unfamiliar and sometimes painful depth. I feel personal satisfaction after reading a book that helps me work out some of my own issues, confront some of my own fears, and redraw some of my own perspectives. That's when I say a book is "life changing" for me. Thread of Grace is such a book. It made me think harder, dig deeper, and muster more forgiveness (specifically and in general) than I have in a long time.
  
  Like life, this book is dirty and messy. It is not for the feint of heart. The war scenes are vivid and accessible; the war strategies employed are intriguing. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction, and to those who like brilliant beautiful writing with ethical probing to back it up.
  
  
  
• Truly a masterpiece - captivating and moving
  By A2E0L063K77T0Q on 2007-01-30
  Mary Doria Russell has done it again - after The Sparrow and Children of God, she's crafted a book that brings together a group of very different people who come to achieve a common goal. Her characters and dialogue are very real - I wanted to meet these people and listen to their stories from their own mouths. Russell has an excellent "ear" and "eye" for the little catchphrases and mannerisms that make each of us unique and memorable to those who know us, and she deftly introduces these into the story so that even the most minor of characters seems truly alive.
  
  This book is not light reading. It is sometimes disturbing and sometimes upsetting; in parts it made me very angry, and in parts it made me very sad; in yet other sections, I laughed out loud. But it will take you into a world that you may not know, and that is a gift.
  
  
• Good Book, But Nothing Special
  By A2L6FT8CSL5A1J on 2005-02-21
  Reading other reviews, or the jacket, you know the premise, so I won't repeat the basics. The story is loosely centered around 3-4 people, but weaved its tale from the perspective of many characters (refugees, partisans, German soldiers, a German defector doctor, priests, nuns, regular Italians, Jewish Italians, children) -- with so many diverse viewpoints, it was no surprise to discover that the story was more about the setting than the people, even though the characters were pretty well drawn out. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to some loose threads (the German perspective late in the book; a couple of characters from early in the story return mid-book in search of another, never to show again) and minor contradictions in the book (a brother and sister in the same place at the same time, with no recognition), for the sake of moving the story along. Still, I did enjoy the characters, and thought that Russell did a fine job of developing them.
  
  Russell also continued her religious philosophizing, something she did in her earlier books. The setting lent itself to this activity, and I wouldn't be surprised if her evident interest in the subject is one of the reasons Russell chose this setting for her latest book.
  
  (Warning: some plot giveaway ahead) The biggest drawback I found with the book is that, while I don't mind characters dying in a book, this one has very few of its characters survive to the end. Thus a contradiction between the basis for the story and its outcomes -- if the point of the book is to recognize that many ordinary Italians made extraordinary efforts to save so many Jews, and did so successfully, why are so few of the characters Russell focuses on alive by the end? Seems she either needed to change her endings or develop some more characters to build around. As it is, were I to rely on this fiction as based on history, I would be left with the feeling that the efforts by Italians were well-intentioned but largely a failure.
  
  
• Amazing
  By A3G0XKBTW9LEOB on 2005-02-23
  Overall, this book was fabulous. Full of many plot threads and many tragedies, at points one becomes overwhelmed... but in the end I couldn't help being wound up in the grace and power of this book. As good as The Sparrow (Russell's first novel), too.
  
  

• Children of God (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
• The Sparrow
• Dreamers of the Day: A Novel
• People of the Book: A Novel
• The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel (P.S.)