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** spoiler alert ** The story of Louie Zamperini, a 4 minute Olympic miler, B-24 bombardier, castaway and POW is amazing. If anything, it's a little too amazing. I can see how this story of courage and survival has become a mainstream favorite (no fewer than 3 people recommended this book to me before I finally downloaded the audiobook for a long road-trip--perhaps the ideal format and situation for this long, harrowing book). LZ's story starts with a teaser prologue that gives the reader a glimpse of the drama/action to come--Louie in the water fending off sharks with his bare hands while a Japanese plane zooms overhead, strafing the area. This action prologue was probably a good call on the writer's/editor's part, as we are then rocketed back in time to Louie's childhood in Depression-era California, then to his remarkable (tragically short) Olympic career. Being a runner, I enjoyed the running segment a lot, but can easily imagine a reader with less enthusiasm letting her eyes glaze over here. Louie's running is interrupted by the start of WWII, and he trades his shoes for an Army Air Corps uniform and, as the prologue has already given away, is shot down somewhere in the Pacific. LZ's experience in a raft for 47 days, and his years as a POW of the Japanese, are as riveting as an action movie. However, I think the book falls short here for letting the action movie take over. A pattern is established: Louie meets an insurmountable barrier, and manages to overcome it by the sheer force of his iron will. Over and over. But we readers are shut out of Louie's inner workings. The trauma he experiences, which turns him towards alcoholism and away from his wife, is suddenly, inexplicably cured and explained away by a religious conversion that comes out of nowhere. I even wondered if I had picked up one of those Christian feel-good inspirational tomes by mistake, and had missed some "redeemed by Jesus!" cover blurb, or sponsorship by Billy Graham. More than anything, Louie's religious epiphany seemed to come so easily, the trauma from his past evaporate so quickly, that it seemed to me to take something away from all the other veterans who couldn't find an easy way out, and lived with the pain for the rest of their lives. Still, this book works well as an inspirational "action movie" that is more interested in the "what happened?" than in the "why?" 3 1/2 stars

2022-12-10 08:26