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Ghosts by Daylight: Love, War, and Redemption
An enthralling, deeply moving memoir from one of our foremost American war correspondents.
Janine di Giovanni has spent most of her career more than twenty years in war zones recording events on behalf of the voiceless. From Sarajevo to East Timor, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, she has been under siege and under fire.
Along the way she meets Bruno, a French reporter whose spirit and audacity are a match for her own. Their love affair spans nearly a decade and a dozen armed conflicts before they settle in Paris to raise a family. But Janine soon learns that a life lived in war is inevitably haunted. Bruno struggles with physical and emotional pain, and Janine, a new mother and wife in Paris, is afraid both for Bruno and herself and for the work that they do and doubtful that she can hold their lives together.
With stunning scenes of action, heart-wrenching accounts of profound love, personal loss, and redemption," Ghosts by Daylight "tells the unforgettable story of a passionate life lived to the fullest. "From the Hardcover edition."
Janine di Giovanni has spent most of her career more than twenty years in war zones recording events on behalf of the voiceless. From Sarajevo to East Timor, from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, she has been under siege and under fire.
Along the way she meets Bruno, a French reporter whose spirit and audacity are a match for her own. Their love affair spans nearly a decade and a dozen armed conflicts before they settle in Paris to raise a family. But Janine soon learns that a life lived in war is inevitably haunted. Bruno struggles with physical and emotional pain, and Janine, a new mother and wife in Paris, is afraid both for Bruno and herself and for the work that they do and doubtful that she can hold their lives together.
With stunning scenes of action, heart-wrenching accounts of profound love, personal loss, and redemption," Ghosts by Daylight "tells the unforgettable story of a passionate life lived to the fullest. "From the Hardcover edition."
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First published January 1, 2011
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About the author
Janine Di Giovanni
24 books148 followersJanine di Giovanni is one of Europe's most respected and experienced reporters, with vast experience covering war and conflict. Her reporting has been called "established, accomplished brilliance" and she has been cited as "the finest foreign correspondent of our generation".
Born in the US, she began reporting by covering the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and went on to report nearly every violent conflict since then. Her trademark has always been to write about the human cost of war, to attempt to give war a human face, and to work in conflict zones that the world's press has forgotten.
She continued writing about Bosnia long after most people forgot it. In 2000, she was one of the few foreign reporters to witness the fall of Grozny, Chechnya, and her depictions of the terror after the fall of city won her several major awards. She has campaigned for stories from Africa to be given better coverage, and she has worked in Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkino Faso, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Liberia, as well as Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, East Timor and Chechnya.
During the war in Kosovo, di Giovanni travelled with the Kosovo Liberation Army into occupied Kosovo and sustained a bombing raid on her unit which left many soldiers dead. Her article on that incident, and many of her other experiences during the Balkan Wars, "Madness Visible" for Vanity Fair (June 1999), won the National Magazine Award. It was later expanded into a book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, and has been called one of the best books ever written about war. Madness Visible has been optioned as a feature film by actress Julia Roberts production company, Revolution Films.
Di Giovanni has written several books: Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love (Bloomsbury/Knopf 2011); The Place at the End of the World: Essays from the Edge (Bloomsbury 2006); Against the Stranger (Viking/Penguin 1993) about the effect of occupations during the first intifada on both Palestinians and Israelis; The Quick and The Dead about the siege of Sarajevo, and the introduction to the best-selling Zlata's Diary about a child growing up in Sarajevo. Her work have been anthologized widely, including in The Best American Magazine Writing, 2000.
She has won four major awards, including the National Magazine Award, one of America's most prestigious prizes in journalism. She has won two Amnesty International Awards for Sierra Leone and Bosnia. And she has won Britain's Grenada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year for Chechnya.
She is one of the journalists featured in a documentary about women war reporters, Bearing Witness, a film by three-time Academy Award winning director Barbara Kopple, which was shown at the Tribeca film festival and on the A&E network in May, 2005.
In 1993, she was the subject of another documentary about women war reporters, "No Man's Land" which followed her working in Sarajevo. She has also made two long format documentaries for the BBC. In 2000, she returned to Bosnia to make "Lessons from History," a report on five years of peace after the Dayton Accords. The following year she went to Jamaica to report on a little-known but tragic story of police assassinations of civilians, "Dead Men Tell No Tales." Both films were critically acclaimed.
With Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, Managua, Nicaragua, January, 1990. Photo by Marc Schlossman
Di Giovanni's book, The Place at the End of the World, a collection of her essays, was published by Bloomsbury in January, 2006. 2006 has also brought projects on Muslims in Europe, the French riots, AIDS in South Africa, September 11 anniversary features, and the current political situation in Israel among others. She is at work on another book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, Up at Tito's Villa, set in Montenegro.
Janine di Giovanni is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a contributing writer to the New York Times, Granta, Newsweek and many
Born in the US, she began reporting by covering the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and went on to report nearly every violent conflict since then. Her trademark has always been to write about the human cost of war, to attempt to give war a human face, and to work in conflict zones that the world's press has forgotten.
She continued writing about Bosnia long after most people forgot it. In 2000, she was one of the few foreign reporters to witness the fall of Grozny, Chechnya, and her depictions of the terror after the fall of city won her several major awards. She has campaigned for stories from Africa to be given better coverage, and she has worked in Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkino Faso, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Liberia, as well as Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, East Timor and Chechnya.
During the war in Kosovo, di Giovanni travelled with the Kosovo Liberation Army into occupied Kosovo and sustained a bombing raid on her unit which left many soldiers dead. Her article on that incident, and many of her other experiences during the Balkan Wars, "Madness Visible" for Vanity Fair (June 1999), won the National Magazine Award. It was later expanded into a book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, and has been called one of the best books ever written about war. Madness Visible has been optioned as a feature film by actress Julia Roberts production company, Revolution Films.
Di Giovanni has written several books: Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love (Bloomsbury/Knopf 2011); The Place at the End of the World: Essays from the Edge (Bloomsbury 2006); Against the Stranger (Viking/Penguin 1993) about the effect of occupations during the first intifada on both Palestinians and Israelis; The Quick and The Dead about the siege of Sarajevo, and the introduction to the best-selling Zlata's Diary about a child growing up in Sarajevo. Her work have been anthologized widely, including in The Best American Magazine Writing, 2000.
She has won four major awards, including the National Magazine Award, one of America's most prestigious prizes in journalism. She has won two Amnesty International Awards for Sierra Leone and Bosnia. And she has won Britain's Grenada Television's Foreign Correspondent of the Year for Chechnya.
She is one of the journalists featured in a documentary about women war reporters, Bearing Witness, a film by three-time Academy Award winning director Barbara Kopple, which was shown at the Tribeca film festival and on the A&E network in May, 2005.
In 1993, she was the subject of another documentary about women war reporters, "No Man's Land" which followed her working in Sarajevo. She has also made two long format documentaries for the BBC. In 2000, she returned to Bosnia to make "Lessons from History," a report on five years of peace after the Dayton Accords. The following year she went to Jamaica to report on a little-known but tragic story of police assassinations of civilians, "Dead Men Tell No Tales." Both films were critically acclaimed.
With Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, Managua, Nicaragua, January, 1990. Photo by Marc Schlossman
Di Giovanni's book, The Place at the End of the World, a collection of her essays, was published by Bloomsbury in January, 2006. 2006 has also brought projects on Muslims in Europe, the French riots, AIDS in South Africa, September 11 anniversary features, and the current political situation in Israel among others. She is at work on another book for Knopf/Bloomsbury, Up at Tito's Villa, set in Montenegro.
Janine di Giovanni is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a contributing writer to the New York Times, Granta, Newsweek and many
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
January 13, 2018
Should've researched what this book was about before reading it; as I don't really enjoy books about romance and relationships, this wasn't for me at all. Probably excellent if you like love stories though.
October 21, 2014
I don't read memoirs. This was in a pile of books a friend gave me and I don't know why I started reading it, but I did. And then I didn't stop till the end.
The story is a war reporter's recollection of wartime, siege, of falling in love, of witnessing genocide and coming to grips with death, of getting married, of giving birth and coming to grips with life, and with fear. It's the kind of story that would not be believable in fiction. Indeed, it's hard to believe as memoir. It spirals around itself, not topical, not chronological, any understandable flow of events is absent and it's hard to keep the story straight, it's more a collection of pieces than a whole picture. But the narrative is raw and real, the descriptions fresh, vivid, gut-wrenching at times with the glimpses of the lives she shares, worlds away from ours, and worlds away from hers at times as well.
And maybe that's her point, that the details of her life are not so important, not more important than any other life. It's the emotions and the revelations of that life she's come to share. And that's where this book resonates deeply. It was hard for me to relate to almost any facet of her experience: everything from her war-torn personal history, to her upper crust, transcontinental family, to her son's french nannies, was bizarre, foreign, strange to me. But the author and her soul, are so human -- as is her refusal to piece a happy ending on to the story. Instead she just offers us the pieces. Making us realize how partial-ness, incompleteness, the vulnerability of an unfinished story, is so human too.
The story is a war reporter's recollection of wartime, siege, of falling in love, of witnessing genocide and coming to grips with death, of getting married, of giving birth and coming to grips with life, and with fear. It's the kind of story that would not be believable in fiction. Indeed, it's hard to believe as memoir. It spirals around itself, not topical, not chronological, any understandable flow of events is absent and it's hard to keep the story straight, it's more a collection of pieces than a whole picture. But the narrative is raw and real, the descriptions fresh, vivid, gut-wrenching at times with the glimpses of the lives she shares, worlds away from ours, and worlds away from hers at times as well.
And maybe that's her point, that the details of her life are not so important, not more important than any other life. It's the emotions and the revelations of that life she's come to share. And that's where this book resonates deeply. It was hard for me to relate to almost any facet of her experience: everything from her war-torn personal history, to her upper crust, transcontinental family, to her son's french nannies, was bizarre, foreign, strange to me. But the author and her soul, are so human -- as is her refusal to piece a happy ending on to the story. Instead she just offers us the pieces. Making us realize how partial-ness, incompleteness, the vulnerability of an unfinished story, is so human too.
July 30, 2016
Хто завтикав відзвітуватися про прочитане для ЛітАкценту до його канікул, той я (серпень, як завжди, підкрався несподівано і непомітно), тож у двох словах звітуватиму тут.
Джанін ді Джованні - реально прекрасна воєнкор, я дуже люблю її статті. Але оця її автобіографія - це, натурально, як "Їсти-молитися-кохати", тільки з реальними злочинами проти людства в ролі декорацій для самоактуалізації героїні. Себто, ви розумієте, "Їсти-молитися-кохати" вже на старті проблематичне інструменталізацією іншого, а у "Привиди при світлі дня" все ще гірше. Себто, з одного боку, тут люди, яких ось-ось розстріляють і прикопають у братській могилі, диктують журналістці свої імена, тут відбуваються військові перевороти, тут журналістка про кожного нового знайомого автоматично прицінюється, як виглядатиме його труп через пару годин після смерті - а з іншого боку, це все перетворюється на декорації у її романтичних стосунках. Себто, безперечно, кожне життя містить множини і це прекрасно, але в цьому тексті множини поєднано на доволі непривабливий спосіб.
(Крім того, текст не зовсім вичитаний і є кілька немотивованих дослівних повторів.)
Джанін ді Джованні - реально прекрасна воєнкор, я дуже люблю її статті. Але оця її автобіографія - це, натурально, як "Їсти-молитися-кохати", тільки з реальними злочинами проти людства в ролі декорацій для самоактуалізації героїні. Себто, ви розумієте, "Їсти-молитися-кохати" вже на старті проблематичне інструменталізацією іншого, а у "Привиди при світлі дня" все ще гірше. Себто, з одного боку, тут люди, яких ось-ось розстріляють і прикопають у братській могилі, диктують журналістці свої імена, тут відбуваються військові перевороти, тут журналістка про кожного нового знайомого автоматично прицінюється, як виглядатиме його труп через пару годин після смерті - а з іншого боку, це все перетворюється на декорації у її романтичних стосунках. Себто, безперечно, кожне життя містить множини і це прекрасно, але в цьому тексті множини поєднано на доволі непривабливий спосіб.
(Крім того, текст не зовсім вичитаний і є кілька немотивованих дослівних повторів.)
June 24, 2021
wow
How do you rate someone's life? How do you read their story and decide how many stars you are going place on their experiences?
This is a memoir of war and love, but really it is a memoir of heartbreak. The first two parts focus on the happiness Janine feels, occupied by the war and the love of her life (Bruno) but then switches to a story of all she has lost throughout her life. Deceptively, really, Janine Di Giovanni slowly deconstructs her life and the trauma she was coming to terms with; trauma that she didn't realise she had until years later when she is finally away from the wars that she had chased for so long.
The last chapter feels like the most beautiful conclusion to a story I have ever read. Coming to terms with grief is never something that is easy or beautiful, and yet somehow Di Giovanni managed to speak to my heart. There were so many moments that brought me close to tears, but that final chapter really affected me for some reason. Maybe that's why I took over a month to read this book; I wanted to treasure every single moment and really reflect on what I was being taught.
I think the first part of the book is a little slow, but maybe that is because I was looking for a book about photography rather than one about a woman coming to terms with her life. Once I got over this slight disappointment I fell in love with this woman, her story, and her quest to find peace. I think my own life deeply impacted my enjoyment of this book- as someone who has had to shape her life around loss from such a young age I could connect to her story and see myself in her sorrow.
Don't worry! This book isn't all sadness and grief and loss; there are some wonderful descriptions of the happinness she shared with her husband, but the part that stuck with me was the grief. If you want to read the most enchanting depictions of the city of Paris look no further than this book. NOw I just have to find her other novels comewhere!
How do you rate someone's life? How do you read their story and decide how many stars you are going place on their experiences?
This is a memoir of war and love, but really it is a memoir of heartbreak. The first two parts focus on the happiness Janine feels, occupied by the war and the love of her life (Bruno) but then switches to a story of all she has lost throughout her life. Deceptively, really, Janine Di Giovanni slowly deconstructs her life and the trauma she was coming to terms with; trauma that she didn't realise she had until years later when she is finally away from the wars that she had chased for so long.
The last chapter feels like the most beautiful conclusion to a story I have ever read. Coming to terms with grief is never something that is easy or beautiful, and yet somehow Di Giovanni managed to speak to my heart. There were so many moments that brought me close to tears, but that final chapter really affected me for some reason. Maybe that's why I took over a month to read this book; I wanted to treasure every single moment and really reflect on what I was being taught.
I think the first part of the book is a little slow, but maybe that is because I was looking for a book about photography rather than one about a woman coming to terms with her life. Once I got over this slight disappointment I fell in love with this woman, her story, and her quest to find peace. I think my own life deeply impacted my enjoyment of this book- as someone who has had to shape her life around loss from such a young age I could connect to her story and see myself in her sorrow.
Don't worry! This book isn't all sadness and grief and loss; there are some wonderful descriptions of the happinness she shared with her husband, but the part that stuck with me was the grief. If you want to read the most enchanting depictions of the city of Paris look no further than this book. NOw I just have to find her other novels comewhere!
January 6, 2012
Di Giovanni is a journalist. She’s been reporting on wars for over two decades. The book is her personal memoir of meeting the love of her life, Bruno, a French cameraman, in the middle of a war zone, Sarajevo. The couple eventually marries, they settle in Paris and have a son.
What struck me most, and I believe the author’s intent, was the effect of witnessing so much violence and deprivation on war correspondents. PTSD takes on so many different forms, and certainly what she experienced was very different from her husband, even though they witnessed the same events much of the time. There’s been a lot of discussion about PTSD in military men and women as well as civilians. Di Giovanni brings to light the personal price of war from a journalist’s perspective.
The main reason I gave the book four stars rather than five was due to poor editing, some clumsy passages, and repetition. Overall, though, it’s a compelling read.
What struck me most, and I believe the author’s intent, was the effect of witnessing so much violence and deprivation on war correspondents. PTSD takes on so many different forms, and certainly what she experienced was very different from her husband, even though they witnessed the same events much of the time. There’s been a lot of discussion about PTSD in military men and women as well as civilians. Di Giovanni brings to light the personal price of war from a journalist’s perspective.
The main reason I gave the book four stars rather than five was due to poor editing, some clumsy passages, and repetition. Overall, though, it’s a compelling read.
February 7, 2012
What interested me about the story was the extraordinary life Janine di Giovanni led, first as a news correspondent in dangerous conflict zones throughout the world in the mid-1990s and early-2000s, then as a newly married and new mother in Paris. "Ghosts by Daylight" tells how the former experiences in Sarajevo, Chechnya, Abidjan, and elsewhere crept stealthily into the safety and conveniences of Paris and into marriage and motherhood. Some event in Paris could trigger a painful memory from those former times; fortunately time gradually muted participants' memories, refashioned survivor's lives, and rebuilt destroyed cities. Written notebooks of deaths and of eye-witnessed events become the literal memory of that chaos.
October 13, 2011
This memoir by a female war journalist is generally compelling, but what makes it particularly interesting is Di Giovanni's account of her complicated transition from war journalist to mother, and the subsequent break-up with her husband, another war journalist whose demons caught up with him. Though I got the feeling that she was selective in her descriptions of the difficult moments in her marriage (not wanting to present her ex-husband in too bad a light), this was still an interesting examination of the price paid by war journalists, and the strain on a marriage when one partner goes off the deep end.
March 28, 2012
She is all over the place in this book, both literally-- all over the world; and chronologically-- I have no idea when half this stuff is taking place. I'm sure that she met Bruno in 1992 or 1993 in Sarajevo, and she had her son in 2003 or 2004. All the other things that she talks about... you sort of have to guess. She's writing about her life, but she goes off on these tangents, memories of childhood or war or people she's apparently close with but hasn't mentioned yet and doesn't mention again... It's like free association writing. I need a timeline! I felt scatterbrained the whole time I was reading it. I think if it were organized better, I would have liked it a lot more.
October 14, 2011
A bit of a disappointment. There is something inherently interesting in a war correspondent's memoir, but this one read more like a simple recitation of places and events, and then when it turned to the emotional life of the writer - mostly having to do with her love affair, marriage and motherhood - it continued in the same vein. The details were interesting, inherently so, but it lacked the emotional turmoil and impact I was hoping for.
March 6, 2014
Book of the Week
Abridged by Jane Marshall. Read by Emma Fielding
Produced by Jane Marshall A Jane Marshall Production for BBC Radio 4.
Nicely written and beautifully read, however lacking anything interesting in terms of content.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
March 16, 2023Be patient. Having read several of Di Giovanni's books, I knew her initial efforts, the first section of this book, would be disorganized as she found her footing. Which she eventually does. So much about war, and the years of reverberating devastation it causes, can be learned from Di Giovanni's books. You'd think, her writing alone, would make others resolve past injustices, peacefully, and avoid conflict, find other ways to negotiate. Stop using nationalism and religion as excuses to torture, rape, destroy and murder.
September 13, 2023
Janine di Giovanni is such a wonderful writer. Her prose flows in a way that makes one want to read just one more chapter. While a story of a mother's panic at dealing with a baby and the downward spiral of a drinking man would usually not draw me in, this one was good enough for me to read until the end. One small irritation - the author and/or the editors muddled up the use of "I" and "me" at least twice within the book. Next time get an editor that has a good grounding in correct grammar. (Purchased at the Lions charity book shop, Queanbeyan, Australia.)
October 5, 2020
Janine and Bruno met while working as reporters in Sarajevo. Theirs was a world full of war, danger, and uncertainty.
Over the years though they found stability in each other and eventually set up home together in Paris.
Janine’s memoir is a love letter, a tribute to her relationship with Bruno.
She writes about the challenges of adjusting to civilian life, the emotional scars they bear from the scenes they’ve witnessed, and parenthood.
Over the years though they found stability in each other and eventually set up home together in Paris.
Janine’s memoir is a love letter, a tribute to her relationship with Bruno.
She writes about the challenges of adjusting to civilian life, the emotional scars they bear from the scenes they’ve witnessed, and parenthood.
February 23, 2023
A story of love and war, yes but also much more.
A story of love that makes you feel like you're walking with the protagonist through the ruins of 2 decades of war, which gives you the image of cruelty justapposed to sadness and love.
The story of a mother, who explains the pain and the terrible effects of the memories gathered through those years of reporting.
A story which I WISH I read for the first time again.
A story of love that makes you feel like you're walking with the protagonist through the ruins of 2 decades of war, which gives you the image of cruelty justapposed to sadness and love.
The story of a mother, who explains the pain and the terrible effects of the memories gathered through those years of reporting.
A story which I WISH I read for the first time again.
November 2, 2023
Little different to what I'm used to, but I did enjoy this book. I enjoyed the insight to the behind the scenes lives of war reporters, and enjoyed the fact that they were able to have some sort of happy life away from the battlefields. I felt immersed in the different time periods and countries this book explored, i escaped from 21st century Sydney and found myself in countries throughout Europe and Africa, during times of terrible wars.
September 16, 2017
Bruno Girondon, the author's former husband, earns five stars for this book, and his life. I'm with you, bro. Been there, done that. If the author earns a star as well, I guess the average is three. Blood simple.
October 11, 2019
Sometimes heavy reading but real life and I'm left with an appreciation for the detailed risks and daily traumas that some journalists have experienced and what kept this journalist going (a unique love story).
April 12, 2021
One of my favourite books from Janine Di Giovanni, I loved every chapter of this memoir, it's a beautiful, touching story of love, life, wartime. I couldn't stop reading till the end, I think I read it in two days during a summer holiday, deeply moving and very courageous!
January 26, 2023
Reading Ghosts by Daylight Love, War and Redemption - brought me into sharp realization what it takes to be a war correspondent, the love of the action and the sacrifice of self. A deeply moving account of her life and love.
March 13, 2018
A hauntingly beautiful personal journey shared courageously with her readers. Janine... this one really shows your heart. Thank you
March 15, 2020
The edition seemed to me like it deserved some more editorial work. Different memories were many times repetitive and too scattered allover the book.
March 7, 2017
I tend to avoid war books because of the feelings of impotent rage and helpless anguish they stir inside me. But having heard the author speak, I was curious to learn some more about her life. The war accounts are a tragic backdrop to the story of how she meets her husband and eventually parts, their relationship an indirect casualty of war. I couldn't empathise with their decision to have a child to cope with their vagaries, when it sounded like both of them are struggling with PTSD, but it's heartwarming to see how the child remains the silver lining in both their lives. Utmost respect to the author and Bruno for choosing a vocation where they have had to sacrifice so much to be the voice of countless suffering human beings who don't have a voice of their own.
November 21, 2012
I loved the intensity of this book, its rawness and honesty. It's a book about love, war and motherhood. It's about the horrors of war and the horrors of love. It tells you that you may get terribly hurt, and that you'll never really get over that hurt, although there are moments or eben months of bliss and happiness. I think Janine di Giovanni is driven, she'll never stop being a war correspondent. And correspondent only because this is the only acceptable modern form of being in a war, other than as a soldier. But as I read it, she needs to be close to the existential situation of war. Only in war does she really seem to be truly alive - and this is also when the book is at comes into its own. I'm not sure about all the motherhood stuff, I think that was another frontier she had to cross but whether it made her happy? Anyway, that's for her to decide. In any case this book is a triumph of really grasping life by its collar and shaking it as violently as you can. Read it!
May 27, 2013
I had a hard time getting into the book and it was only the subject matter that kept me reading. The early prose was over complicated, wordy and un-integrated. "She lay down curled in a position like an infant inside her mother" Instead of "the fetal position". BUT ... this syntax makes sense as the story unfolds and di Giovanni's over-determined identity (identities?) emerge. Is she Italian American? British? French? or does she belong only to Sarajevo? By the time she gives birth to her son, I was enthralled by the humanity of di Giovanni as well as the world she was taking me to - war zones. It was an honor to read this book. Superb.
January 23, 2016
I found this book engrossing. Janine takes you right into her life and her experiences. She's seen too much and lived to tell the story. It's authentic, heartfelt and honest. My only issue with the book is that at times she flashes to different scenes and events at different times in her life and you lose the chronological thread of her life story. Having said that, that is what makes this read more of a conversation. It's almost as if she's sitting next to you and baring her soul. A brave woman who has gone to the worst places and come back to tell the truth in all its sad detail. And yet she is not without hope.
November 13, 2011
I just finished this memoir by journalist and one-tough/tender-cookie Janine di Giovanni. Di Giovanni lays bare her heartbreaking story of life as a war correspondent in more than a dozen conflicts around the world. And how all of that can catch up with you one day or another, sooner or later, when you least expect it and maybe even think you've outrun it. I wholeheartedly recommend her book. A great love story. Love, in all its richness and limitations. Beautiful.
October 14, 2012
This was a summer holiday read and I read it in two days, I couldn't put it down. It was a gripping story with a mixture of love and war and the mixture of psychology in it really drew me in. The ending did disappoint me slightly but it was probably the most realistic way it could have finished and being a true story it is what it is. But a beautiful book and a wonderful story.
December 11, 2015
I read "Eat, pray and love" many years ago. I thought I would find the same taste in this book so I started reading. I found some parts are very boring, especially when she describes French cuisine... The last chapter made cry. If you know what happened 1992 in Bosnia I am sure you feel the same while reading that chapter.
July 8, 2016
I really enjoyed reading this book, and it was really interesting to hear from a war reporter how her job has affected her personal life and marriage, and how much damage such a job can do to one's mental health. I highly admire war reporters, and judging from this book, their job is definitely not an easy.
July 15, 2011
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
Memoir by the war correspondent Janine di Giovanni about meeting her husband, a French cameraman and their battle to settle down to a normal life in Paris after years of covering brutal wars around the globe.
Memoir by the war correspondent Janine di Giovanni about meeting her husband, a French cameraman and their battle to settle down to a normal life in Paris after years of covering brutal wars around the globe.
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