Anyone else not like The Tattooist of Auschwitz?

[Fantasisa]

I listened to it on Audible which has some sound/editing issues which didn’t help and the protagonist was dramatised very meekly which I found annoying. I just didn’t connect with the love story at the heart of it and found it underwhelming and weirdly unmoving. Anyone else?

I didn't think it was at all well written.
Interestingly I follow Auschwitz memorial on twitter and they have been really condemnatory about the book.
(It's a good follow btw-really sobering and beautifully done)

I didn't like it, for many of the reasons mentioned above. I felt it lacked heart and credibility. The characters were two dimensional - the portrayal of the Nazi officers in particular was almost a caricature. I got to the end, and I felt that I just didn't know Lale. Which given the access the author had to him, is quite a feat. And what I could glean, I just didn't really like.

The edition that I have states that it was initially interviews taken with a view to film or screenplay and that when that didn't come about, it was put together as a book instead. I wonder how much that impacted on the writing.

On one level, I felt this book was a simple tale of boy meets girl, boys fall in love with girl etc.

However, I felt it seriously underplayed the horrors of the concentration camps. It was more like a poor man’s Butlins. Although it did refer to food shortages etc, it gave the impression that most people were okay, just didn’t get fed a lot etc hence the need for extra rations. However, the photographs that exist of the concentration camps are of people emanciated, starving, ribs showing etc, rather than just being a bit hungry.

So on one level, I think it’s a sweet little love story, but on another, I feel it does a dis-service to the inmates if the camps.

I thought it was terrible. There was no interrogation of the feelings of those who, like the eponymous tattooist, collaborated on order to survive, it felt very superficial and the horror of the camps was not conveyed.

I abandoned it about a quarter of the way in and went back to read ‘If this is a man’ by Primo Levi, as a means of purification and to remind myself of the true, unsanitised horror of this period.