Rating: 
Summary: Splendid, affecting story...I loved it!
Review: I have just finished "Losing Julia," and can do nothing more than highly recommend it. I am truly saddened to leave Patrick Delaney, the 81-year-old main character and World War I veteran whose life Jonathan Hull so beautifully crafts in this lovely novel. The author has done a transcendent job in this book of creating genuine and unique characters whom we can see and feel and imagine, coupled with the gripping world history that had such a crushing, but not fatal, impact on all of their lives. Until now, I had very little knowledge about World War I, as I am a baby boomer born in 1948. With this wonderful read, however, I have come to know what this, and every, war symbolizes for all of the souls who are touched by it. Patrick Delaney, Julia, Daniel and all of the others who grace this story are beautifully delineated for us, giving us a tale of historical fiction in which there is not one false note. Thank you, Jonathan Hull, for your beautiful writing, for your luster in creating flawed, real and consequently, luminescent characters for us to experience...and for this gripping tale of love, loss and the redemptive power of love, at whatever cost. I will watch with great interest for your novelistic efforts in the future! If you love history mixed with beautifully drawn fictional characters who live it and report honestly what it has done to their lives, this is a must-read for you! A beautiful reading experience...
Rating:
Summary: The plot is familiar, the storytelling unique
Review: Jonathan Hull's "Losing Julia" is a terrific novel. The plot line is familiar--boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl stays lost--but Mr. Hull's way of telling us this tale is powerful and original.The truths told by the protagonist are so real, so right that I was breathless in places and tearful in others. This is a must-read novel for those seeking a bittersweet romance and those who want sad truths told well.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning!
Review: Jonathan Hull's beautifully crafted novel about love and war is superb. The story is told through Patrick Delany's eyes as a 19-year-old foot soldier in the trenches of WWI, as a 29-year-old WWI veteran looking for answers to the never-ending questions of life, and as an 81-year-old great-grandfather in a nursing home. Hull does a wonderful job weaving the narrative through the different phases of Patrick's life; he understands and knows the characters of Patrick, Daniel, and Julia the way any writer should---like he/she knows himself/herself. There are no surprises or unusual twists...the reader knows that Daniel dies, but the manner of his death is still shocking. I literally gasped and had to close the book to adjust to the vivid scene that Hull described. In our quest to honor the veterans of WWII, I think Americans may have forgotten the greater horrors (if possible) of WWI. And it comes as no surprise that Patrick loses Julia, Daniel's lover. But the manner in which the characters get from Point A to Point B and the choices each character makes makes this is one of the best crafted novels to be published in the last five years. It takes a lot of skill to interweave such three timeframes so that the reader is neither lost nor bored. It would have been easy for Hull to descend into the ghastly and ubiquous, but his ability to tell the tale rises well above the ordinary. I plan to use this novel in my Basic Fiction Writing classes as illustrations of the amount and type of descrption, character development and plotting. There is not an unnecessary word or scene in this entire novel. It's a page-turner that will live in my heart for many, many years.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I read in 2001
Review: Just now getting around to reviewing this book. I read on average 75 books a year--Losing Julia was the best one of 2001. What a wonderful book--"Like most bookworms I read so as not to be alone, which often annoys those who are trying to make conversation with me......Books aren't just my defenses, the sandbags I use to fortify my position, they are also the building blocks of my soul, and I am the sum of all I read...." Jonathan Hull "Losing Julia" ....What more can be said.....a simply astonishing book.. (In case you're wondering..Dean Koontz's "One Door Away from Heaven" gets the nod for best book in 2002!)
Rating: 
Summary: Need a cure for insomnia???
Review: This was one of the WORST books I have ever picked up. I got to about page 80 while at school one day I and I felt compelled to just leave it in the garbage. I love books and am ashamed that I even bought it. The "hero" is Patrick Delaney, a man dying from cancer- but I think it was more painful for me than it was for him. This is vague, unemotional, and the characters are paper thin. You don't care about anybody in the story, you can form no emotional attachment or care whether he loses or finds Julia. The war scenes were graphic and admittedly well written but there was no good story around it so what is the point? Hull should just write non fiction history books. This was truly awful; what more can I say? I wish there was an option where I could give this book -10 stars.
Rating:
Summary: An Unbelieveable Accomplishment
Review: I'm a bit late in adding my vote of confidence in "Losing Julia." I read a prepublication galley of Jonathan Hull's brilliant first novel, and fell so in love with it, I preordered five copies. I have none of those first editions now. I "loaned" them all to friends, who in turned loaned them to their friends, who in turn loaned them to their friends. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that Mary Travers <She of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame for my younger readers> used to gift copies of Hermann Hesse's "Glass Bead Game" to people she had recently met and was interested in one way or another. If they understood Hesse's message, they were allowed into Ms. Travers' circle of friends. If not, well Ms. Travers' would surely be civil and polite, but never intimate with anyone who "didn't get it." This is how I feel about "Losing Julia." Hull combines three separate but unified story lines in one incredible novel. A story of war at its barbaric ugliest, a story of the near aftermath of that war, and a story of a man growing old and finding himself a prisoner of his failing body and his too-sharp memories of what he was, what he is, what he might have been, and of the eternal regrets of aging. Reading "Losing Julia" is a rediscovery of what the human condition really is; often heroic, sometimes laughable, occasionally despicable, and always, always, utterly human. To be human is to be flawed, and Hull's hero never overcomes his flaws. On the contrary, his flaws and his sheer humanity are so engaging, one finds that one is reading something that could almost be autobiographical, and yet the novel touches something so deep in the soul as to be as uplifting and inspiring as brilliantly colored autumn leaves swirling in a brisk October breeze. This book is not for the faint-hearted, the prudish, the moralist, or the beach-romance reader. This is for the reader who desires a thought-provoking novel that challenges the intellect, tickles the funny bone, and engages the tear-ducts <often all in one sentence or paragraph>! Go ahead, buy the mass-market paperback. You'll come back and buy the hardcover for rereadings. And for gifts for people you wonder if they'll "get it." "Losing Julia" is, quite simply, a perfect book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully written...brings new meaning to life and love
Review: I thought Losing Julia was powerfully written. Though hard to follow at first, the story is gripping and the war descriptions and details makes the reader feel as if they are really experiencing the horror! The story makes you appreciate life and love beyond all other demands of today's society. This is a powerful book!
Rating:
Summary: GREAT STORY!!
Review: This book was so amazing. I was totally swept up in it. If you like war stories and love stories then this is the perfect book for you. I don't want to say too much - I don't want to give it away if you're going to buy the book. Just be prepared to not be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: A Memorable Odyssey
Review: I finished reading Hull's inspirational novel months ago and, still, I cannot get it out of my mind. Hull's ability to draw you into the minds of his characters and engage you in their thoughts is extraordinary! Read it!!
Rating:
Summary: diamond in the rough
Review: I think probably most people approach this book, as I did, as just another mindless Harlequin style romance novel.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Hull has constructed an insightful story, and it is one which most will find, contains a great many shared experiences. I can safely compare it to All Quiet On The Western Front, not only in its WWI setting, but in its exploration of character interaction.
I would hope that Hull will submit a screen play to the film industry for translation to the silver screen.
|
