SITE RATING: 3/10
SITE REVIEW: An
interesting, but failed attempt to dramatize the dual stories of Handel
and The Foundling Hospital's founder Captain Coram, and their
intersection, Handel
and the Messiah Story has
the basic elements of a dramatic story, but the disparate parts never
gel. Author Hertha
Pauli, an Austrian emigrant who came to America to help anti-Nazi
Germans who had fled the war, has the germ of a good idea here, but her
prose is so stilted and cardboard that the characters fail to come to
life. She begins the dual stories from each character's
childhood, and, interspersing actual events with made-up situations and
dialogue, gradually brings their two lives together with the beginnings
of Handel's charity performances for the hospital.
Interspersed
throughout the book are black and white drawings and photographs
depicting scenes or items which appear in the story, but these factual
photographs tend to blur the line between whether the author is
attempting a purely fictional account of the events, or a factual
retelling of the story, with dialogue. It feels more like the
latter - a dry recounting of events, with clumsy "scenes" thrown in;
and the two competing halves never come together in a compelling
manner. I think there is a good idea here, with pathos,
drama,
and a rich denouement, but the subject needs a better scribe than Ms.
Pauli.
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