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Half Blood Blues - Community Reviews back

by Esi Edugyan
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meganbaxter
meganbaxter rated it 12 years ago
Jazz under the Nazis, both in Germany and in occupied Paris. Friendship and betrayal in the worst of circumstances, when betrayal can literally lead to death. And then, years later, revisiting those haunts, those people, those betrayals. This is a really amazing book.It was all the buzz when this bo...
ellaminnowpea
ellaminnowpea rated it 12 years ago
Incredibly good, but I need to let this stew for a moment before I write a proper review.
It's Just, Like, My Opinion, Man.
It's Just, Like, My Opinion, Man. rated it 12 years ago
Thoroughly unlikable and unsympathetic characters fail to carry what could have been a poignant story. The combination of the jazz age and the fall of paris creates an environment ripe for a hot blooded story of betrayal during wartime, but at no time did i ever sympathize with a single one of the ...
JGold
JGold rated it 13 years ago
"Edugyan creates melodic prose worthy of Langston Hughes, and when she's describing her characters music sessions and love of Jazz, even someone like me can hear the wailing trumpets and rhythmic beat of the drums."See full review at:http://wp.me/p2aMr6-5l
Tiny Library
Tiny Library rated it 13 years ago
Half Blood Blues is about the disappearance of talented jazz musician Hieronymus Falk during the fall of Paris in 1940. Fifty years later his bandmate and friend Sid Griffiths is watching a documentary about the legendary record they made together and becomes determined to find out what really happe...
narfna
narfna rated it 13 years ago
Putting this back on the shelf for now until I'm in the right mood.
Coffee Bean Bookshelf
Coffee Bean Bookshelf rated it 13 years ago
Normally I'm a huge fan of books written about Europe during WWII, but for some reason I just couldn't get into this one. Maybe it was the way it was written (usually I don't have an issue with things being written how they would be said by the characters, though), but I found myself just reading to...
Ciska's Book Chest
Ciska's Book Chest rated it 13 years ago
Esi Edugyan has a Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing (2006). Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was pub...
Eccentric Musings (jakaEM)
Eccentric Musings (jakaEM) rated it 13 years ago
This book was ok. I didn't love love love it - I found it hard to get into (that could be because I was reading it amidst a house full of people, though). The language of the intriguingly-unreliable narrator seemed contrived (compared to George Rue, which did a better job of a similar patois). I ...
altheaann
altheaann rated it 13 years ago
I picked up this book 'cause the blurbs indicated it was about the underground music and club scene in Germany before WWII, which is something that interests me. However, there isn't really much of that in the book. There's a passing mention of Max Ernst, and mention of some musicians and dancers - ...
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