I read Elie Wiesel’s “Night” because my daughter was assigned to read it for school. I had never heard of it, but as it is a memoir of Elie’s time in the concentration camps during the Holocaust, I expected something very different.

The author’s writing about this period in his life is very matter-of-fact. He covers a three-year period of time in about 115 pages. We learn nothing really of his life before his family was forced into the ghetto, and he doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what he thought or felt as he went through this experience, which I’m sure was horrific. I don’t even remember him mentioning his mother and sisters after they were separated. He narrates, as if all of this happened to someone else, with almost no feeling.

I am not discounting the author’s experience at all, and I am not saying I would have “enjoyed” the book more if he had included more detail. I just feel that with a memoir like this with so much historical value, the reader should be able to feel empathy at least for what the author experienced. Maybe something is lost in the translation.

I’m giving it three stars because it’s not a bad book. It’s ok, and as I said, it definitely has historical value.