This is a trifle unorthodox, but I think I'll make some public notes as I go along. I am a tremendous admirer of Lucy Beckett, and have been looking forward to this as a significant work on serious subjects. Sadly, halfway through, I find myself counting pages. The tale of a bright young man, born in 1905, in his odyssey from old Silesia through the horrors of Nazism and World War Two ought to bring out the best in a serious author. So far, it only brings out the most: the piles of words and ideas which could, in my partner's words, gag a maggot. Not that Ms Beckett isn't a penetrating thinker or a graceful prose-stylist, but the presentation so far smacks more of homiletics than fiction, like the lectures in a required course, rather than the discourse in a seminar of well-motivated students. I ask myself as I read whether this book, despite the flaws I've mentioned above, have some use-value for well-intentioned readers who don't know this historico-cultural material as well as she does -- and as I do too, let me assure you. Well, the verdict must remain Open at this point. On a lower, purely literary level, POSTCARD has (so far) the weakness which is nearly fatal to Ms Beckett's TIME BEFORE YOU DIE, namely a wooden main character recalling both Master Fletcher and Cardinal Pole in the earlier work. A novelist who starts with this disadvantage is rowing upstream with only one oar. It CAN be done, but . . . [To be continued] ( )

Not engaging. Also, Nazis. ( )