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Dec 30, 2011

karen rated it:

i'm glad this book didn't win the damn booker. that just means it wasn't a complete snoozefest. Vernon God Little? thumbs down. The Gathering? bleah. Wolf Hall? zzzzz. G.?? not his best. and from what i hear of this year's winner, the barnes? is not positive reviews, kiddies.

so i'm glad this book escaped that label, because when this book is good, it sparkles like a thousand year old vampire in the sun. and i was halfway through before i realized this was an authoress. not that it More...

16 comments like (42 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2011

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it:

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 would have liked more music - she did a great job describing the first-person feeling of playing music, but a less good job really bringing the jazz scene in Nazi Germany / Paris in the 30 More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2011

Barbara rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2012

Dana rated it:

Esi Edugyan is an absolutely gorgeous woman and she has written an absolutely gorgeous book called Half-Blood Blues. I am ashamed to say I had never heard of it despite the fact it was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, and the Man Booker Prize and a winner of the Scotia Bank Giller Prize. Add to that, I was messing around on amazon.ca and discovered that the amazon powers-that-be list this gem among the top 100 books of 2011. Still I a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 14, 2012

Eric rated it:

Just horrible! I am very glad I’ve finished this book. I had to really force myself from the beginning to the end to get through this novel. I didn’t like it because I had difficulty understanding so many elementary-level sentences, with many sentences that didn’t make sense, obstructing with my comprehension of each chapter and the novel as a whole. I would say I only understood 20% of the novel upon finishing it, possibly largely due to the ungrammatical and nonsensical sentences and just horr More...

0 comments like

Feb 08, 2012

Clare rated it:

In this memory novel, the fears and regrets of an elderly man are interwoven with his experiences of pursuing the jazz dream in Nazi Germany and occupied France. Edugyan brings this period to life, shedding light on the experiences of black Americans and Europeans during Hitler’s expansion across Europe, and showing the euphoria and dream of Europe’s jazz culture. More than this, her novel is a study in friendship, friendships formed and intensified and pushed to the limits under unbearable co More...

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Jan 17, 2012

David rated it:

I have to admit this book started slow but showed promise. Then I got to a dialogue section and began to hate it but after mid-way, things fell together and I really enjoyed this tale. The ending was really enjoyable and I won't give that away. I can see why this book won the Giller Prize, Canada' s top literary prize.

The story centers around Sid and his jazz musician colleague Chip, two black musicians who lived through the Nazi era of Berlin and Paris. This is a tale of jeolousy, bot More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Alison rated it:

I mostly loved the characters and the dynamic of jazz musicians in WWII France and Germany. It was fun when Louis Armstrong was introduced as a character. Also their friendships, which suffered from jealousy, admiration, loyalty, and irritation, seemed very true. My favourite part about this book was the dialogue and slang — the characters' voices felt very believable. The time shifting, however, was problematic for me. I was also confused by many of the secondary characters and trying to keep t More...

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Nov 23, 2011

Deborah rated it:

Of the five books shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues held the greatest appeal for me. I should also mention that the book was nominated for three other prizes: The Man Booker Prize, Canada's Governor General's Award and The Writers Trust Fiction Prize.

Purses notwithstanding, there was something about the book that drew me. Considering this, I think it may have been the title that conjured colourful images - blue blood, half-blood - interesting More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 19, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

"Half-Blood Blues" is the story of a group of jazz players who lived and performed in Germany and. France. The Nazi's viewed any kind of jazz music as depraved and banned it. The story is told through the voice of Sid who was the least talented of the group and who was directly responsible for the deportation to a concentration of the most talented half black musician in the group. The story alternates between 1939/40 and 1992. The story of 1939/40 tells what happened to the memb More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 10, 2011

Kaliis rated it:

Okay. I really REALLY wanted to give this book 4 stars...

But the ending is so rushed I thought I'd somehow gotten a copy of the book that was short a few pages, which is impressive since I read it on my kindle.

The Ending is also a little too pat for my tastes. All along she's got this fantastic unreliable narrator who openly acknowledges that he's unreliable in the best of ways: By simply saying that he's old and doesn't really care. And this works well with the course More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Steven rated it:

The reviewers seem to focus on that this book is about jazz and/or World War II but what impressed me was the way the author documented the desires, passions and pains of the protagonist Sidney Griffiths.

-Page 128
I felt sick with embarrassment. All I heard banging bout in my old skull was Hiero's damn hiccuping laugh. The bastard.
They was playing a sloppy set, Paul missing his cues with a big grin at each nod from Ernst. Chip, drunk though he was sounded tight as ever, b More...

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Oct 20, 2011

Steven rated it:

Esi Edugyan has created a vivid and unique world in this story of betrayal, love and jazz -- within the grimly darkening shadows of the rise of Nazi Germany before World War Two. Sid and Chip are black American jazz musicians working in pre-war Berlin, where racism had been less grim than in the U.S. before the Nazi campaign for "Aryan purity" escalated; they connect with Hiero, a young genius with a trumpet, whose father was African while his mother was a white German. All beco More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 18, 2011

Andrew rated it:

All of a sudden Chip give me a look of surprise from his dark corner.

Kid wasn’t even hardly listening, it seemed. Handling his horn with a unexpected looseness, with a almost slack hand, he coaxed a strange little groan from his brass. Like there was this trapped panic, the barely held-in chaos, and Hiero hisself was the lid.

I pulled back soon as he come in, fearing we was going to overpower him in that narrow closet. But he just soften it down with me, blurr it up. Then he b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2011

Ali rated it:

This is the fourth of this year's booker shortlist that I have now read.

I loved this novel! Atmospheric, poignant and enormously readable, I actually found it hard to put down. Beautiful writing with such a wonderful sense of time and place that it perfectly transports the reader to the jazz cafes's of Berlin and Paris in the 1940's. Narrated by American Sid Griffiths, Hiero's bandmate, now 83 years old, in an unforgettably, authentic, musical voice. It is through him we see the first More...

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Nov 27, 2011

David G. rated it:

I’m not sure if there is a social trend going on, or if it’s just the books that I’m drawn to currently, or if literary prize juries happen to be sharing my particular obsession, but I’m reading a lot of books these days about memory.

Some of them are outstanding – Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” tops my personal favourite list and walked off with the Pulitzer Prize several years ago.

Some of them leave me quite cold – Julian Barnes 2011 Man/Booker Prize winning “The Sense of an More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 29, 2011

Rachel rated it:

I really enjoyed this. The entire novel is written with a southern states of america accent (I think - I'm no expert on accents). The Booker list this year seems to have a theme of time running through it. This novel deals with time too. It has a split time frame of a man (Sid Griffiths) looking back on his younger days in Berlin and Paris at the outbreak of the 2nd world war. The "now" period is 1992.

Sid and his friends Chip and Hiero were jazz musicians. As is often the cas More...

0 comments like

Oct 10, 2011

Julie rated it:

I was very disappointed in this book,the subject should have been a very interesting and gripping story, instead it dragged and even the end was a let down. The author did capture the frantic way people lived before the fall of france and the fear that people felt from the gestapo. The story revolved around a group of jazz players who were touring the Berlin club scene, and then fled to France.1 of the group was a black German, whose father came from the Cameroons and his mother was a white Germ More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Althea rated it:

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 - but it doesn't really paint a wide picture of that demimonde. Rather, it focuses on the relationship between three jazz musicians, both at that time, and in the 'present' day (1942 and 1992). It actua More...

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Jan 06, 2012

Jill rated it:

Sometimes two stories vie for attention: the story the author could have written and the one she actually did write. Such is the case with Half-Blood Blues.

If you come into this book expecting the promises of the publicist – in essence, the black German experience under the tyrannical rule of the Third Reich – you will find this book to be wanting. However, if you are looking for a book that delivers on what the author fully intends – an exploration of a one-time tight-knit jazz ban More...

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Sep 21, 2011

Victoria (vikz) rated it:

The story is played on a large geographical and political stage. It has Europe as it canvas. It covers the experiences of ‘Black’ and ‘Mixed Race’ individuals, living in Europe, during the reign of the Fascist Government. But, it also looks at the lives of individuals. This book is voiced from the perspective of an elderly African American who is looking back on a time when he was living in a racist, Nazi, Germany. He speaks of the lives of his band mates as they; formed friendship, played More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2011

Ariel rated it:

This was a great book!

It really brings you into the world of people of partial African descent in Europe during the opening stages of World War II. I would say "African Americans", but only two of the four main characters are American. One is Canadian and one is a "mischling" -- a child of a German mother and Senegalese father. They are all brought together by a love of jazz, which was highly popular in the interregnum between WWI and WWII in Europe. This book is More...

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Dec 31, 2011

Jocelyn rated it:

This is one of those books that is a great read, and then it becomes UNPUTDOWNABLE. I loved reading this book for the writing alone, and I think all wanna-be fiction writers should read it as a shining example of how what great writing can achieve. I loved how polished the characters are, the well engineered plot and the research behind the story. And the story - so devilish, interesting and startling. Awesome read.

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2011

Christa (Hooked on Books) added it

This review originally posted at Christa's Hooked on Books

Half Blood Blues is a heart wrenching story of survival, betrayal and how the choices we make affect us for the rest of our life.

Half Blood Blues, along with The Sisters Brothers are two books that have received a lot of buzz this award season. Both have received short list nominations for the Giller and Booker prizes. It doesn't get much better than that. In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I rea More...

0 comments like

Jan 08, 2012

Debbie rated it:

I always read the Giller Prize winners and am often disappointed. Not this time. The story is one that hasn't been told often - black jazz musicians in Berlin and then Paris as the Nazis begin to sweep across Europe. Louis Armstrong even makes an appearance. The main characters , Chip and Sid, have had success in Germany with their music and have a band that has recorded . Just as Berlin starts to become a dangerous place for them , a new brilliant musician arrives - Hiero - followed by Delilah More...

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Aug 09, 2011

Lucy rated it:

Can’t say that Half Blood Blues was really what I expected. I expected it to primarily be about the second world war and what it was like to be a black person living in a Nazi occupied country. The book of course did have an element of this in, and the setting of the war was important for the story, but really it was a book about a group of friends, and about music. At first I found the voice of Sid (the narrator) really annoying but as I got used to it, and started getting into the story, it c More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Anne rated it:

This is Sid Griffith's tale told in his own unreliable words - a story that he must resolve in order to find the forgiveness and redemption that he has been searching for ever since his escape back to America from Nazi occupied Paris in 1940. "Half-Blood Blues" is also a beautiful fictionalization of what happened to both Black and Jewish jazz musicians who were so revered and popular in Paris and Berlin between the wars. In cadenced rhythmic language that captures the essence of time More...

1 comment like

Oct 10, 2011

Aaron rated it:

It’s amazing how certain pieces of fiction can resonate with a reader based on their own life experiences or those of the people closest to them. There were multiple moments during my reading of Esi Edugyan’s novel Half Blood Blues where I smiled, paused, and thought, “I really need to tell my grandfather about this book. He’s really going to love it,” only to then remember that he passed on a little over a year ago.

Whatever sadness I felt as a result of this recollection though, was More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Kristine rated it:

I would never have pick up this book to read (about jazz musicians during the war) but it was a book club pick. At first I wasn't sure how it was going to play out. I found it difficult reading - both because of the language and the musical, and war jargon - you have to read it very slowly. About half way through I start to realize how stunning it was. Edugyan writes in the first person of Sid Griffiths - and I don't think I've read a character so real. During the craziness of the war - whi More...

4 comments like

Jul 08, 2011

Bettie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like