Guernica (Dave Boling)

Mixed feelings about this workmanlike first novel.

It has a saga-ey feel to it, a bit like Edward Rutherfurd, and belongs somewhere in the intersection of 'Historical novels where the characters think and feel as if they were present day people' and 'Disaster movies where one lovingly establishes all the characters and then crashes the plane into a mountain'.

I read it in one sitting, without ever being bored, but at the end I felt sort of empty, and not as if I'd learned anything new about Guernica, The Spanish Civil War, Picasso, or the Basque people.