Category Archives: Novel

Literature and War Readalong June 28 2013: Winter in Wartime by Jan Terlouw

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Winter in Wartime

Two years ago I watched the Dutch resistance movie Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter). While it’s not my favourite resistance movie, I liked the story and when I saw it was based on a novel I felt tempted to read it. A review on Iris’ blog during last year’s Dutch Literature Month reminded me of the book. I’m looking forward to this book as it’s the first time that a readalong title is a children’s book or rather a novel for young adults. As Iris states in her review, it is even a classic of Dutch children’s literature.

Jan Terlouw is a Dutch scientist and politician. He has written over 20 books for children.

If you would like to join but are not in the mood to read the novel Winter in Wartime, you could watch the movie instead.

Here are the first sentences

It was dark.

Step by step, one hand groping in front of him, Michiel edged his way along the rough bicycle path that ran parallel to the cart track. In his other hand he carried a cotton bag containing two bottles of milk. “New moon and heavy clouds,” he muttered. “Van Onmen’s farm should be around here somewhere.” He peered to the right, straining his eyes, but could see nothing at all. Next time I’ll refuse to go if they don’t give me the lantern, he thought. Erica should make sure she’s at home by half past seven! I can’t manage this way.

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The discussion starts on Friday, 28 June 2013.

Further information on the Literature and War Readalong 2013, including all the book blurbs, can be found here.

Anna Funder: All That I Am (2011) Literature and War Readalong May 2013

Posted in Books, Literature, Novel, Readalong by

All That I AM

It’s not easy to write about this book and what is even worse – this is the very first time I almost forgot to write the review of one of my readalong titles. The book is not bad as such, I didn’t suffer while reading it or want to abandon it or anything like that. It just never reached me, if you know what I mean. It was like listening to the radio while talking to someone at the same time. You hear some individual words which briefly get your attention but overall it’s just background noise. This has certainly nothing to do with the topic as such but was entirely due to its execution. I was wondering before starting the novel why people called this “faction”. Now I know.

All That I Am tells the true story of four friends. Ruth Becker, her cousin Dora Fabian, the playwright Ernst Toller and Ruth’s husband Hans Wesemann. At a time when hardly anyone noticed, they knew that Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 was a very bad thing. Being part of the communist and socialist movement, they were not only in opposition to the National Socialist party but in grave danger from the beginning.

The chapters alternate between the point of view of Ruth Becker and Ernst Toller. They are both told in the present, just before their deaths, at different points in time. Ruth is living in Australia when she is looking back on her life, while Toller stays in the US in 1939 and tells Dora’s story from his point of view. Although they were both important, and, in Toller’s case, even more famous than Dora, their stories focus on Dora who was the center of their respective lives, their best friend and lover.

After a small act of rebellion – Ruth hangs a red flag out of the window, after Hitler comes to power – the four friends have to fear for their lives. People are being arrested and executed if they openly criticise the regime.

The four decide to leave for London and continue their work there. They fight in order to raise awareness of what is happening in Germany and still hope that Hitler will be overthrown.

At first they might have felt like they had escaped but Hitler’s agents were everywhere and even people living abroad were executed. They hear daily about people they know being killed. They must also fear that there is a traitor among them.

I’m not going to reveal more as the book works best, I think, when you don’t know too much in advance. That way it’s at least to some extent surprising. There are a few dramatic events and unexpected developments.

While I didn’t know these particular stories, wasn’t familiar with the four people, I knew enough about German history, so that this particular slice of it, had nothing new to offer. What was new were the stories of the four friends but the way this was told was not very interesting. It’s true, the book picks up speed in the second part but still, it read like Funder had tried to fill facts with life but didn’t really succeed. All we got was a half filled balloon hovering half a meter above the ground. It never managed to fly high up in the sky.

The best parts were the few moments telling Toller’s and Ruth’s final days.

Those who have read Stasiland, Anna Funder’s non-fiction book on Eastern Germany, were all very enthusiastic, which makes me think it would have been better if she had opted for the same approach here. Only, the facts are kind of meagre and maybe she thought turning something you could have told in 50 non-fiction pages would work better if turned into a full-length novel.

As for the topic – Yes, there were people who were aware as soon as 1933 that things were going wrong in Germany. Toller and his friends were not the only ones. There was a large number of writers and artists, communists and socialists who left Germany as early as that. What the book doesn’t explore is the fact that if  the communists and socialists would have been able to overthrow Hitler and his party, Germany might not have been much better off.

Sure, it’s an interesting story, sad and dramatic but told in a lifeless manner and very dry. It certainly didn’t work for me. Luckily it worked for others.

Other reviews

Lindsey (Little REader Library)

Lizzy’s Literary Life

Tony’s Reading List

The review is also a contribution to the Aussie Author Challenge.

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All That I Am was the fifth book in the Literature and War Readalong 2013. The next is the WWII novel Winter in Wartime by Dutch writer Jan Terlouw. Discussion starts on Friday 28 June, 2013. Further information on the Literature and War Readalong, including the book blurbs can be found here.

Linda Castillo: Gone Missing (2012) Kate Burkholder 4

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Gone Missing

Linda Castillo’s Gone Missing is the fourth in her Kate Burkholder series. It’s the first book I’ve read by this author but that wasn’t a problem. Castillo constructed the series in such a way that anyone can pick it up at any time without feeling lost. Downside of this approach is that some elements will be repetitive should one choose to read more of this author. But since this was my first, I was glad to learn a lot about Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her love interest Detective Tomasetti.

If you know the series, you know it has a very special setting, namely Ohio’s Amish Country. I’ve always been fascinated by the Amish (or any other religious group like them). Apart from being a very gripping read, this book offers a great introduction to the Amish way of life.  What is very important is the fact that Kate Burkholder was Amish. Whenever there is a crime in the Amish community, it’s likely other police forces will ask for her help. Not only because she knows the Amish but because she does speak Pennsylvania Dutch and therefore the Amish are much more likely to talk to her. I had never heard of Pennsylvania Dutch before and the sentences she included all through the book surprised me greatly. I thought it would be like Dutch, but no, not at all – it was almost the exact same language as Swiss. With the exception of a few words, I could understand it all.

A series of missing Amish teenage girls awakens the mistrust of the police. Something cannot be right. When they find blood on one of the locations where one of the girls was last seen, it’s clear that a crime has happened.

Burkholder and Tomasetti who work together on this case know that they have to be quick. The girls may still be alive and could be saved if they manage to find them in time.

The book starts with the suicide of an Amish girl, ten years before the other girls go missing. Once they dig deeper, they notice that there are a few cold cases of girls gone missing, some a long time ago. All these cases appear to be linked.

I can’t reveal too much or the book is spoilt. Just this much – they gather a lot of information and make good progress when suddenly they find out that the culprit might be someone they didn’t suspect at all and this puts them in great danger.

Kate is an interesting character. We learn why she left the Amish life and what has happened to her in the past that makes her so suspicious. Tomasetti is equally damaged and they try to take things very slowly. I thought they worked very well as a couple, both are appealing characters.

Because the case makes them visit a lot of different Amish families we read about different ways. Unfortunately all the Amish families have one thing in common – they are highly patriarchal, the father makes all the decisions.

All the girls go missing during their “rumspringa” – literally that would mean “jumping around”. It’s a time during which they are allowed to be “wild”, to drink, smoke and party before they have to decide whether they want to be baptised and follow the plain life or not.

I really liked the crime aspect and how it was solved and the characters as well, plus the Amish setting was informative and fascinating. I also enjoyed that Kate, having left the Amish, still feels somewhat nostalgic about her childhood and often not only mentions negative but very positive aspects of Amish life. What I liked less were a few cringe worthy passages towards the end when Burkholder speaks about “the blue brotherhood” (meaning the police force and how tight-knit they are)… Brrr. Shudder. Other than that it’s great.

I highly recommend to try the series. I thought Gone Missing was very well constructed and suspenseful. The solution was creepy and, thanks to a final twist, even chilling. For those not sure whether they would like it or not – there is a 60 page short story Long Lost available for the kindle, under 1$. I think it is set between Gone Missing and the next one in the series.

A Day in Lion Feuchtwanger’s Life – On Klaus Modick’s Sunset (2011)

Posted in Books, German Literature, Literature, Novel by

Sunset

Apologies for using this misleading title. Sunset is the German title but, unfortunately, it hasn’t been translated yet.

Klaus Modick is a German author whose books regularly win prizes. He is also well-known as a translator of English and American books. John O’Hara and Nathanael West are a few of the authors he has translated. He wrote his PhD on the Jewish German writer Lion Feuchtwanger and frequently returns to him in his writing.

Sunset tells about one day in Lion Feuchtwanger’s life. Using flashbacks and memory tags, we are given insight into his life, an era and his lifelong friendship with Bertolt Brecht.

It’s a day in 1956. Feuchtwanger is alone in his home in Pacific Palisades. His wife is out of the house for the day. In the early morning he receives a telegram. Feuchtwanger is the last of the great German authors who is still living in California. During the war a lot of them stayed here. The Manns, Brecht, Werfel, Baum… Feuchtwanger was the most successful one, the one who made the most money. His house in Pacific Palisades is a huge villa. Unlike most others he doesn’t want to return to Germany. He thinks of his home country, of his childhood, he misses using the language and the snow and many other things but he loves the US and the Germany he once knew, is gone anyway.

The telegram he receives informs him of Brecht’s death. What a shock. Not only does he lose his best and maybe only friend, he is reminded of his own mortality. He is 16 years older than Brecht, it should have been him first.

The book then moves back in time and describes how the two met in Germany, how Feuchtwanger became the young Brecht’s mentor, how he knew immediately that he met a genius.

The beauty of the language struck me from the very first sentence. Modick uses images sparingly but to great effect.

In the inner courtyard the roses wither in tired opulence. It almost looks as if they were bleeding to death.

or

The smell of paper and dust wafts through the open door of the salon. The ink of the night trickles from the east into the fog.

Modick uses one day in the life of Feuchtwanger to unfold a whole life, exploring various different aspects and themes. Feuchtwanger’s books are infused with stories from his life. The daughter who died barely one year old, things people say, characters, such a lot is taken from his life.

He loves the US but like so many others he is scrutinized by the McCarthy government, suspected to sympathize with Stalin.

An early memory haunts him on the afternoon of the telegram. As a child, on an excursion with the whole family, Lion fell into a swamp. He was scared of drowning, cried for help but nobody came to his assistance, neither his parents, nor any of his eight siblings. They only laughed. This episode points to a recurring theme in Feuchtwanger’s life – being ridiculed. People like Thomas Mann and many others envied him his whole life and tried to mask this with mockery.

The friendship with Brecht is peculiar. They are so different but influence each other. Brecht has ideas, Feuchtwanger money and discipline. They often work together. They share a passion for women; both are adulterous men.

Towards the end of his life, writing is what keeps Feuchtwanger going. He writes one long novel after the other. After his prostate operation there is not much more left, he thinks. Passion is gone. And now Brecht is dead. But he doesn’t despair. He works out, works hard on his novels, enjoys life, loves the US and still hopes for citizenship.

Modick let’s us experience the way Feuchtwanger wrote – collecting ideas, noting down dreams, fleeting thoughts, images, symbols – nothing is lost, everything kept in notebooks. It takes a long time until he captures the perfect sentence, the perfect description. He approaches his work slowly, using information, memories, dreams.

Modick is a translator. It isn’t surprising that language is important in the book.Feuchtwanger mediates on language. On how you can translate things but they still don’t mean the same . The German word “Eisblume” which haunts him on this afternoon is a good example. In English “Eisblume” means “frost pattern” but literally “Eisblume” means “flower of ice”. A world of difference.

Modick paints the portrait of an interesting man. Successful and proud of it, yet modest and incredibly kind and generous. Without Feuchtwanger’s money many an author would have suffered greatly. Yet most of them didn’t even know the money came from him.

I have been fascinated since years by the German writers who escaped Germany and fled to California. The names in the novel are illustrious. Not only the German ones. Feuchtwanger knew them all, the actors, film makers, studio bosses. The German authors were all hoping to make money in Hollywood but that didn’t happen for most. Brecht and many others failed. Feuchtwanger regularly sold the movie rights to his books but they were hardly ever made into movies.

Feuchtwanger was a passionate collector of books. He first collected books when he was still in Germany but those were confiscated and probably burned by the Nazis. In his French exile he started another collection, most got lost when he fled. Finally in the US he started again and when he died he owned far over 30,000 books.

Sunset is a wonderful title for a book which describes the evening of the life of a writer and an era which is long gone. It is infused with the fading light of a dying sun, sinking slowly into the ocean. The title is perfect and so is the German cover with its sepia photo.

Modick is compared to authors like Grass, Lenz and Walser, it’s easy to see why. It is a real shame he hasn’t been translated.

Literature and War Readalong May 31 2013: All That I Am by Anna Funder

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All That I AM

When I first heard of Anna Funder’s novel All That I Am  I wanted to start reading it right away as it sounded so appealing. The novel is inspired by – or based on – the tragic life of German-Jewish left-wing playwright Ernst Toller. Some have termed the book “faction” but judging from what I read about it, Funder took a lot of liberties, which makes the term “fiction” more appropriate in the  end. All That I Am is Funder’s first novel but she had a huge publishing success with her book Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall.

The book starts in 1933 with Hitler’s rise to power and tells the story of four young German exiles who try to raise awareness in the UK for the threat the new German government poses. Toller is one of them. In 1933 he lost his citizenship, left Berlin and went to live in London.

Here are the first sentences

When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. Our apartment was on the Schiffbauerdamm near the river, right in the middle of Berlin. From its windows we could see the dome of the parliament building. The wireless in the living room was turned up loud so Hans could hear it in the kitchen, but all that drifted down to me were waves of happy cheering, like a football match. It was Monday afternoon.

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The discussion starts on Friday, 31 May 2013.

Further information on the Literature and War Readalong 2013, including all the book blurbs, can be found here.

Timothy Findley: The Wars (1977) Literature and War Readalong April 2013

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The Wars

Is it possible to write about WWI – including the trenches, the incapable high command, shell shock, gas attacks, rats, mud, facial wounds, the immense body count – and still be original and have something profound and thought-provoking to say? Before reading Timothy Findley’s  The Wars I might have said “possibly” but after finishing it, I have to say “definitely”. This novel proves that in the hands of a powerful writer anything can become extraordinary.

The Wars has an episodic structure but still tells a coherent story, exploring what happened one day, during WWI, when young Officer Robert Ross, broke the ranks, committing an act of total insubordination, shot another officer and freed dozens of horses. How did it come to this? The story is told in a circular way, starting with the end, withholding all the vital information, and then moving back to  the beginning, unfolding every step which led to that fatal day.

I said in my intro post that I was worried the book would contain a lot of animal suffering and it did but in an unusual way. The strength of Findley’s work is that he manages to show, just like Coetzee – another defender of animals – that, at the end of the day, animals and humans are equal. Both feel pain; their lives are precious and must be protected. Being alive is nothing short of a miracle.

This first quote is central in the book and illustrates perfectly what kind of person Robert Ross is

In another hole there was a rat that was alive but trapped because of the waterlogged condition of the earth that kept collapsing every time it tried to ascend the walls. Robert struck a match and caught the rat by the tail. It squealed as he lifted it over the edge and set it free. Robert wondered afterwards if setting the rat free had been a favour – but in the moment that he did it he was thinking: here is someone still alive. And the word alive was amazing.

The instances in which animals die at the hand of men who have gone crazy or are saved by compassionate men are numerous. Madness is an important topic in this novel. Not just in the sense of war is madness but because people lose their minds during battle or under attack. And often they take it out on weaker ones. Wounded Germans, prisoners or animals.

Many of the soldiers in the book question the decisions of their superiors

This – to Bates – was the greatest terror of the war: what you didn’t know of the men who told you what to do – where to go and when. What if they were mad – or stupid? What if their fear was greater than yours? Or what of they were brave and crazy – wanting and demanding bravery from you?

Life in the trenches is constant terror, trying to stay sane and attempting to survive.

Robert had only taken eight hours sleep in the last three days. He was living on chocolate bars and tea and generous portions of rum which he took from the supply wagons. His body was completely numb and his mind had shrunken to a small, protective shell in which he hoarded the barest essentials of reason.

The novel is divided in many short chapters which could be read separately but definitely work as a whole. This isn’t a collection of snapshots, it is a novel but this approach of unfolding the story in short chapters, which change point of view, narrative technique, tone and mood, make every part very powerful. Findley is probably one of the most assured writers I’ve read. This could have been difficult to read but most chapters contain strong and expressive scenes. There is far more show than tell in this book, which makes it accessible but also painful. Death, pain, loss and grief are described in a civilian setting and during war, and finally illustrate that love is all that counts. War is mad, inflicting pain is mad and treating people without respect is mad as well.

What came as a surprise were the many funny moments in this book. Rodwell is an officer who saved some injured animals after an attack

“Where did you find the hedgehog?” Robert asked.

“Under a hedge,” said Rodwell.

Everybody laughed.

“I suppose that means you found the bird in the sky,” said Devlin.

“Would that I had, Mister Devlin,” said Rodwell. “No sir – I found him with the hedgehog. They were crouched there side by side when I got them by putting out my hand to secure the toad. We were all there together, you see. It was a popular hedge just at that moment.”

There are many other funny moments. I was glad for those, otherwise the book would have been really dark.

The Wars is populated by likable characters which makes it a painful read. There are not many men or animals who survive in this book. It’s not too gruesome as wounds and pain are not dwelt on but it has many explicit moments which make it an equally beautiful, powerful and painful read.

Other reviews

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Buried in Print

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

The review is also a contribution to The Canadian Book Challenge.

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The Wars was the fourth book in the Literature and War Readalong 2013. The next is the WWII novel All That I Am  by Australian writer Anna Funder . Discussion starts on Friday 31 May, 2013. Further information on the Literature and War Readalong, including the book blurbs can be found here.

Literature and War Readalong April 29 2013: The Wars by Timothy Findley

Posted in Books, Novel, Readalong by

The Wars

On my intro post to the Canadian Book Challenge John, the host of the challenge, suggested I read Timothy Findley’s The Wars. There are quite a few Canadian WWI novels and this is said to be a Canadian classic.

Tomothy Findley wrote novels, plays, short stories and non-fiction. Many of his novels received prestigious prizes.On the back of my copy it says that he is Canada’s greatest living writer. That was back when the book was printed, in 2001. Findley died in 2002.

I must admit the first sentences make me feel anxious. Horses in WWI novels and movies are hardly ever a cheerful thing.

Here are the first sentences

She was standing in the middle of the railroad tracks. Her head was bowed and her right front hoof was raised as if she rested. Her reins hung down to the ground and her saddle slipped to one side. Behind her, a warehouse filled with medical supplies had just caught fire. Lying beside her there was a dog with its head between his paws and its ears erect and listening.

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The discussion starts on Monday, 29 April 2013.

Further information on the Literature and War Readalong 2013, including all the book blurbs, can be found here.