Book info

• Title Kane and Abel
• Author Jeffrey Archer
• Year 1979
• Genre Drama

Two strangers born worlds apart with one destiny that will define them both. William Lowell Kane, the son of a Boston millionaire, and Abel Rosnovski, the son of a penniless Polish immigrant, are born on the same day on opposite sides of the world and brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. Locked in a relentless struggle spanning sixty years and three generations, the two men battle for supremacy in pursuit of an empire, fuelled only by their hatred for the other and the knowledge it will end in triumph for one, and destruction of the other...

Thoughts

I’ve read this before, a long while ago, and I wasn’t that bothered about reading it again. Except, it was on my Book List to read and then Amazon gave it away for free for a short while. With all those circumstances, who was I to say no?

What intrigues me about this book is the style of writing. When I am trying my hand at fiction, I always worry that I am skipping ahead, missing important bits, trying to cover too much time in too short a word count.

Here, Archer is the master at covering two entire lifetimes in a reasonable book length. There are bits missing, but is it annoying? I can’t decide. All the major things are there, and you don’t miss anything important. But equally you never quite get in depth with anything either. Still, you get a feel for the characters and their motivation, you know why things happen the way they do, and it’s clear who is good and who is bad. So nothing is missing. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but it’s certainly worth a read to get a feel for a different style of writing.

Rating: 4 / 5