I'm celebrating tomorrow's release of The Decision with another review, this one by Jill Franclemont, who posts reviews on her blog All Things Jill-Elizabeth. I appreciate how well Jill understood what I was trying to do in this story!
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This was an absolutely fantastic read. Wyle is a long-time favorite of mine, and her ability to immerse her readers in wildly disparate worlds and characters' lives is one of her absolute strengths. This time she's taken on the rise of Hitler and Nazism, and done it with a more historical eye than you typically see in a novel that is, at its heart, ultimately about deciding what type of person one wants to be.
By exploring the impact on one man's life of the pre-World War I German heydays, the difficulties of the war years, the retribution of the post-war era, and the rising tide of German nationalism in their wake, she has taken a LOT of political and social history and worked it into a very moving story of family, survival, and the power of choice - even when no "choices" seem possible (or optimal). With her trademark eye for detail, particularly around the everyday elements of her characters' worlds - (which are the precise type of details that bring a world to life), she has brought to the fore the conundrum of how to be an honorable person even when the world around one seems intent on forcing choices in other directions...
And all that is independent of the REALLY cool aspect of the story, which is the linchpin of the eponymous decision. Three boys. One soldier. One split second to decide. And the presentation of this moment in time at the opening and closing of the story made for such a powerful set up, particularly given the familial associations (explained thoroughly). I really enjoyed the way the story wrapped up, tying those pieces together and offering up possible consequences without making anything tidy or neat. It was open-ended without being unsatisfying, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions - or, as I did, imagine multiple outcomes, all of which were equally plausible and offered different opportunities for thoughtful consideration.
This was a moving and interesting story and I can't recommend it highly enough!
I couldn't ask for a nicer review! (I will, however, ask that those of you who obtain and read the novel leave some sort of review, on Amazon or elsewhere -- even if it's just a sentence or two. Thanks!)
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