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Oct 06, 2017DorisWaggoner rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
At first, the book seems to drag. It doesn't take long for that to become the point, as the reader is dragged completely into a world from which there is no escape. People known to their guards only by their numbers wake in the bitter Siberian winter, and spend the entire day working completely to exhaustion building nothing, trying only to survive on minimal gruel and filthy crusts of bread, insufficient sleep, harassment or worse, counting the days until their release. Yet during this one dreadful day, Ivan has moments of sheer happiness. H even thinks that perhaps spending the rest of his life in this labor camp atoning for something he didn't even do would be preferable to release to a world that's passed him by. It took me several weeks to read, as the horror of it made me put it down, only for the fascination to make me pick it back up again. An incredible book.