"In Love with Jerzy Kosinski" by Agate Nesaule (ISBN 9780299231309) introduces us to Anna, a woman haunted by her experiences in World War II, married to a controlling, emotionally abusive man, struggling still with her relationship with her father.

Right up my alley, I thought.

But I didn't like Anna.

Perhaps because I've never been forced to relocate from my homeland or faced the tragedy of war firsthand or even perhaps because I was not familiar with the story of Jerzy Kosinski himself. (Aside for those of you in the same boat: Kosinski, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust by adopting an assumed identity, gained fame for his novels but was later accused of being a plagiarist.)

Whatever the case, I was never able to connect with Anna.

I never felt I understood how her war experiences had shaped her, just that they had. Same goes for her relationship with her father and her relatives from the old country.

The novel is well constructed and Nesaule's descriptions of Wisconsin rang true, but I just couldn't lose myself in the story.

- Tricia Ambrose

P.S. Jason, here's my story in six words: Crowd noise masked her final scream.