Anyone who enjoyed Hillenbrand's previous book, Seabiscuit, will know that she has a fine line in compelling narrative. Unbroken is no different: meticulously researched and powerful. The reader, unlike the airmen, would rather the days adrift went on longer ... In Zamperini...Hillenbrand has discovered a man of complexity and wisdom who can look back from his great age and see the pattern of his life emerge ... Here is the story that few PoW books have bothered to tell: of a man struggling to escape an inescapable past ... Hillenbrand marches second world war literature right back into the spotlight.
His is one of the most spectacular odysseys of this or any other war, and 'odyssey' is the right word, for with its tempests and furies and monsters, many of them human, Zamperini’s saga is something out of Greek mythology ... It’s also yet another testament to the courage and ingenuity of America’s Greatest Generation, along with its wonderful, irrepressible American-style irreverence ... Hillenbrand is particularly well suited to tell this inspiring tale. Apart from a rocky beginning (when, seeming to lack confidence in her main character, she hypes him), she is intelligent and restrained, and wise enough to let the story unfold for itself. Her research is thorough, her writing (even on complicated, technical wartime topics) crystalline. Unbroken is gripping in an almost cinematic way. In only one sense does it disappoint, but it’s important: that is, in its portrait of the hero himself ... virtually everything about Zamperini is filtered through her capable yet rather denatured voice, and we don’t really hear him. So, while a startling narrative and an inspirational book of a rather traditional sort, Unbroken is also a wasted opportunity to break new psychological ground.
Hillenbrand tells [Zamperini's] story as a nearly continuous flow of suspense ... Hillenbrand's vivid accounts of battles, technological advances such as the top-secret Norden bombsight, explanations of Japanese policy toward POWs (including a 'kill-all' order at war's end) as well as her footnotes and acknowledgments detailing her research are all worthy of careful reading. But it is the tension of Zamperini's fight to live in barbaric conditions that makes Unbroken so disturbing and thrilling.
In the decades since the war's end, publishers have churned out so many 'epic tales of endurance' and 'amazing sagas of survival' that a reviewer can be excused for approaching yet another one with a certain skepticism. But Zamperini's story has a legitimate claim as one of the most remarkable—and appalling—to emerge from those perilous times ... [the book's] heavy reliance on personal reminiscence does have drawbacks; Hillenbrand presents as fact a few too many stories that seem like family legend ... The book's early chapters unfold like a 'Seabiscuit Redux,' as Hillenbrand sketches the career of an undisciplined misfit who starts to find redemption ... the book has an upbeat ending ... Hillenbrand credits Zamperini's defiance and irrepressible spirit.
...Ms. Hillenbrand has a gift for dusting off history and presenting it as compelling drama ... In beautifully paced action sequences, Ms. Hillenbrand brings alive the dangers not only of aerial combat but also of simply flying over wide-open ocean ... She writes vividly of the aviator's life in the Pacific theater ... Her staging of Mr. Zamperini's descent into captivity in a similarly dramatic way is gripping, if slightly synthetic too ... Many readers may wish that Ms. Hillenbrand had dwelt more on the man she has known for seven years. She doesn't show us much of the hero in repose or illuminate how his wartime trials look to him in the sunset years.
Hillenbrand is undoubtedly a terrific reporter and storyteller, with an eye for details that make each page sing. But her truest gift may be her innate respect for her subjects. Hillenbrand never deifies Zamperini, who returned from war a broken man prone to flashbacks and barroom brawls before a chance encounter with evangelist Billy Graham turned his life around. Unbroken is a spellbinding celebration of resilience, forgiveness and the human capacity for finding beauty in the unlikeliest places.
Zamperini’s story seems designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring. It sucked me in and swept me away. It kept me reading late into the night. I could not … (it really hurts me to type this) … put it … (must find the strength to resist) … down ... Hillenbrand ... builds her portrait, with loving patience, out of the tiniest details ... Hillenbrand has come to revere his courage and intelligence—and rightly so. Still, I found myself wondering, occasionally, if that devotion was an obstacle, if it led Hillenbrand to accept a version of Zamperini’s life that is slightly less complex than his actual life might have been.
From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable ... Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story...she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption.
