A Very Late Book Club Post

Last week in book club we discussed how we are actually losing interest in the book because of the authors tendency to veer off about facts and historical context. Hillenbrand had our attention in the beginning because she was shaping who Louis was and forming him into a literary character we could understand and sympathize with. Now, because of the World War II setting, she seemed to feel that we, as the readers, need a timeline of events in order to understand the event Louis was a part of. While sometimes this is true, most of the time we don't need it and I find myself getting lost or losing concentration of what Louis is doing. It takes the reader out of the world of Louis and muddles it with historical dialect like a text book. I hope that once the war is over, we can go back to focusing just on Louis as he is an interesting enough character on his own.