Books like Resistance

Well, the beginning of Resistance wasn't bad but it all went downhill from there. This was my first book by Anita Shreve and despite the fact that I didn't like it, I'm prepared to give this author another try- hopefully her other works are better. Anyhow, I have many issues with this book, but I will just try to write down a few:- This is one of the most unevenly paced and illogical books that I have ever read. The introduction to the book wasn't bad, a bit cliche and stereotypical but bearably so. However, after the introduction what we get is a story that not only drags but doesn't make much sense. The author uses a ton of repetition, possibly mistaking it for poetical writing and setting the done- it was just painful to read. The plot is both slow and obvious. There was one episode (a date in a cafe) that was downright silly and terribly written (in every sense of the word). Towards the end of the book, there is a sudden twist and it really got my hopes up, I was sure that the book will start to make sense. Alas, it didn't. In fact, the culmination of the book was the worst kind of ending for this story. If possible, the ending made the book even more sentimental, emotionally manipulative, predictable, stereotypical, and cliche. -I found it hard to relate to the characters, possibly because they weren't written very well. This especially applies to the protagonist of the novel, the American pilot and the Belgian resistance fighter/housewife. Instead of taking the time to form characters, the author relied on adding random details about them and repeating them ad nauseam. I can see how someone might still be drawn to them, but I wasn't- or I wouldn't keep noticing all the odd details. For me personally, Shreve's writing didn't made the character come to life and it wasn't poetical. The other characters were just as stereotypical. The only character that I found touching was an old Jewish lady mentioned at the start of the novel, but I have a feeling that hers is a true story (or based on a true story), so the fact that it was touching had little to do with the writer's skill.- The main character Clare who is supposedly and intelligent women who reads English book apparently knows how to use only one tense in the English language: the present continuous. She keeps using it through the book, never learning another tense. It is both annoying and it makes the reading painful. As someone who teaches English as a second language, I can tell you this makes no sense. A person just starting to learn English might confuse the present and continuous tenses, but the very notion that a person wouldn't learn or use more than one tense is idiotic. Obviously, an adult person would have a clear enough concept of past, present and future. As far as I know, tenses exist in the French language. Someone who stills struggles with English might use the present simple when the present continuous is more appropriate or confuse one tense with another occasionally but they wouldn't use one present tense to describe past events- all the time. It makes no sense.- Another thing that I found annoying is that a lot of things didn't add up. For example, Claire is supposed to be taking care of a large farm, that includes a lot of animals that need to be fed and etc. every day. The American pilot admires her for that quite clearly on one occasion. However, when the two of them hide in one part of the house for days because they are afraid of Nazi Germans finding them, those animals and the farm magically take care of themselves and Claire is able to get back to her farm duties without problems. I also found it strange how easy they found it to hide from the Germans, it was all to convenient- every time. There was little logic to their actions. Sometimes the two of them would hide for days but more often they would risk everything by listening to BBC radio loudly. Whatever.-I had a feeling the author is being condescending towards the Belgians. They are all depicted as stupid peasants, especially in comparison to the American pilot (who doesn't do much in the course of the book but I got this feeling that his superiority is something to be taken for granted). Some of the Belgian characters are depicted as brave, but they are not impressive or well portrayed characters. They don't seem relevant, besides obviously Clare who has an interest in English literature, so that makes her better than anyone else in the author's eyes.- I also don't like the 'all powerful' and 'larger then life portrayal' of Nazis. All right, they don't take a significant part in the book but there are some unpleasant implications. The Nazis are supposed to be all knowing, all seeing, infiltrating even the smallest of peasant resistance movements.... If the Nazis were so smart, why did they lose the war? I honestly can't remember reading a book that describes Nazis as conceded, pompous, lazy or stupid. I feel like the Nazis are always hyped up to make the fight against them seem more dramatic. It is almost as bad as saying that what they believed (the racial superiority of Germans) is true. I hate reading about Nazis as some kind of superhuman beings. - While we're on a subject, I don't like it when war is being idolized or romanticized. I have a feeling that some people enjoy reading about terrible things that happen to others, for purposes that have nothing to do with learning or education. They do it for excitement, possibly because they have or live empty lives themselves. It is one thing to read about historical horrors for the sake of education, it is another to make a fetish and/or soap opera from it. I have my own term for it, I call it 'war porn' and I don't like it at all. I'm often surprised with how little do people actually know about WW2 in terms of numbers and statistics. Most people don't even know how many people were killed in their own country, possibly because their whole concept of WW2 history is founded mostly on romantic films. I could go on and on about this novel but maybe it is enough to say that I didn't really care for it.