Random Acts of Heroic Love- Danny Scheinmann

Cover of Random Acts of Heroic Love

This review was written 10/5/09

Synopsis(from Amazon)

Two tales of love Two stories of loss
One great emotional journey…
1992: Leo Deakin wakes up in hospital somewhere in South America. His girlfriend Eleni is dead and Leo doesn’t know where he is or how she died. He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But Leo is about to discover something that will change his life for ever.

1917: Moritz Daniecki has survived fighting in the Great War. But at what cost? Abandoned in the Siberian wilderness, he is determined to return to his beloved Lotte, the memory of whose single kiss has sustained him throughout the war. What lies before him is a terrifying journey over the Russian Steppes. If he ever makes it, will she still be waiting?

Review

This book had been on my wishlist for ages before I actually bought it, as I had been unsure as to whether I would enjoy it or not. Now I wish I’d bought it earlier. It was beautiful, and sad, (highlight for spoiler) but hopeful too.

It is the story of lost love and the search for love. Two tales, one of a soilder of the first world war, and the other of a boy from more recent times whose girlfriend had died. Books don’t usually make me cry but this one deffinatly brought a few tears to my eyes. At first In prefered the recent story was the one I was more interested in but gradually I became just as interested in the second story. The soilder in the second story was a soilder for Austria-Hungry fighting on the Russian front, generally stories of war are based around the British army and around Flanders, or at least that side of the fight so it was good to see a different army and different battlefields.

The characters seemed very real to me, as in nothing was black and white, while I still had favourite characters there were no characters I could say were all good or all bad.

(highlight for spoiler)While I didn’t trust Roberto, I felt he was manipulating Leo, in the end he was part of what helped Leo get over his loss, and he had some interesting ideas.

Strangely my favourite character was probably Eleni, maybe because we see her through Leo’s rosetinted glasses, I liked Leo too, and maybe liking him is worth more because we saw more of his character

4.5/5 (I’m taking off half a point because the second story took a while to interest me)