Sunday, April 3, 2016

Anna and the Swallow Man by Gabriel Savit - NO

Savit, Gavriel Anna and the Swallow Man, 230 pages. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. $17.99. Language: R (1 swear, 2 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG; 

Set in Krakow, in 1939, Anna is a young girl at the age of seven when her father was called to a meeting for all of the professors at the university. Her father dropped her off at a friend’s store where she had stayed many times before when her father had meetings. Everything was the same except this time her father never came to take her home. She meets a man who will not tell her his name so she calls him the Swallow Man. He takes her and becomes like a father only very unlike her real father who talked to her and played with her. The Swallow Man takes her into the wilderness and they walk for many years. He teaches her how to survive while all around them they are trying to stay alive from the effects of war. 

I was bored reading this book until page 167. Up until this point in the book they are just wandering around. I could barely keep my eyes open every time I picked up the book to read it. The “f” word is in it twice towards the end and there is a scene where she is asked to remove her clothes and stand in various potions in front of a pharmacist in order to get pills for the Swallow Man. The Swallow Man also kills someone. It is not written in details how he did it. And then they came upon a dead man and it was described with blood and made me feel yucky. 

NO. Reviewer: Candice

No comments: