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Eleven Days of Hell: A Terrifying True Story of Kidnap, Torture and Dramatic Rescue by the FBI and the KGB
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364 pages, Hardcover
First published March 10, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Did Not Finish
July 5, 2015Tried to read this book twice but the writing was not really good. They did not manage to lure me in and I wanted to. I've read 1/3rd and am giving up.
October 24, 2009
True story upon which David Hagberg's Burned was based. A story of real life heroes and villans, of unprecedented cooperation between the U.S. and Russia law enforcement, and especially of the Bornsteins, who survived the ordeal but were driven apart.
December 30, 2020
This must have been an incredible and awful ordeal to experience, with some very interesting threads to the story.
Unfortunately, I found that the wiring style wasn't very good, for example throughout the book adjectives and adverbs seem to be added just for the sake of it, even at times contradicting themselves.
The writer has attempted to combine their first person account with some third person sections to give other viewpoints and context. This could have been a great idea, but the execution didn't work for me. I felt that there was not the right balance between first person introspective analysis and third person investigative analysis. For example, the writer used a lot of judgemental descriptions or names for the kidnappers, which could have worked if it was more emotionally available writing, however it jarred with the other apparent attempts to appear more objective and emotionally distant. It could definitely be just my reception, but the third person sections just felt quite arrogant to me.
Luckily, the book was a pretty quick read so I was able to get the story without having to struggle with it for too long. It was good enough to make me think that I would read about this again if something was written by an investigative journalist with good prose writing.
Unfortunately, I found that the wiring style wasn't very good, for example throughout the book adjectives and adverbs seem to be added just for the sake of it, even at times contradicting themselves.
The writer has attempted to combine their first person account with some third person sections to give other viewpoints and context. This could have been a great idea, but the execution didn't work for me. I felt that there was not the right balance between first person introspective analysis and third person investigative analysis. For example, the writer used a lot of judgemental descriptions or names for the kidnappers, which could have worked if it was more emotionally available writing, however it jarred with the other apparent attempts to appear more objective and emotionally distant. It could definitely be just my reception, but the third person sections just felt quite arrogant to me.
Luckily, the book was a pretty quick read so I was able to get the story without having to struggle with it for too long. It was good enough to make me think that I would read about this again if something was written by an investigative journalist with good prose writing.
July 14, 2020
Well, I kinda liked the book even though it didn't make me excited to read it throughoutly .
December 26, 2009
Wow- would not want to face this.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews