Zaremba

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Zaremba, or, Love and the Rule of Law, by Michelle Granas

Cordelia lives a severely constricted life in Poland, translating articles and caring for her oddball family members.  This takes up pretty much all her time until she happens to meet Dariusz Zaremba, a businessman whose rivals have targeted him for revenge in the form of false accusations of criminality.  As she is thrown into a new world of smear journalism, publicity, and government corruption, she has to learn to take action--something she has practically never done before.

Although the book is partly a love story, the wider focus is on the rule of law and what happens when governments ignore the rights of individual citizens.  I was quite impressed with that aspect of the novel, and liked certain lines:
She was simply appalled at the powerlessness of the individual before the forces of the state. (p 124)

 [on corrupt use of government power]  "The activities of ordinary criminals pale in comparison, if one considers the damage to society and the rule of law." (p.480)

Zaremba was a chunkster, but I didn't think it lagged or anything.  It was worth the time it took to read it and I enjoyed the novel, which is the author's first, quite a bit.  I think I'll be reading it again sometime.



I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 21, 2013 at 7:51 AM

    Oooo, interesting! How heavy-handed is the stuff about government corruption? Although I do love reading books where the government is Out to Get You, it can start to feel conspiracy-theory-ish pretty quickly, I've found.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanApril 21, 2013 at 8:29 PM

    I'd say it didn't get into conspiracy-theory stuff at all. It's not really an action/thriller kind of book. The government people are not all bad by any means, and the 'bad guys' do things for political stunt reasons, or else because they are mistaken about what's going on. It was interesting; it didn't really fit a genre like 'thriller' or 'romance' or whatever.

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