Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
Very interesting, and definitely learned a few things about post-war Germany.
I've always wanted to read a book about the de-Nazification process and it's been so hard to find some good literature on this subject, but Brook did a good job. Too bad it ended so fast as I was looking foward to comprehend Rachael's complicated heart and dig into Lewis' broken mind. Their relationship was the foundation for the whole book but there was no emotional closure for me: Lewis was badly damaged, Rachael was there for him (finally!)... but I wanted more! It might be selfish of me but I really wanted to have some final tidbits over their story.
Edmund was a real gem in this book: his scenes were so kind and sweet, it was impossible not to love him. His misadventures and questions about the German people, the ciggies... everything was well developed. I wish there was more about him *sighs*.
Another thumbs up for me was how Lubert described the German people after WWII: many of them didn't want to leave their country, they wanted to rebuild it all from scratches and they believed they could do it. Herr Lubert was the plain definition of it: when he mentioned the future buildings, the trains and galleries you can feel his need of peace and freedom for all.
Nevertheless, this is such an emotional book, beautifully written but damn short. :(
Edmund was a real gem in this book: his scenes were so kind and sweet, it was impossible not to love him. His misadventures and questions about the German people, the ciggies... everything was well developed. I wish there was more about him *sighs*.
Another thumbs up for me was how Lubert described the German people after WWII: many of them didn't want to leave their country, they wanted to rebuild it all from scratches and they believed they could do it. Herr Lubert was the plain definition of it: when he mentioned the future buildings, the trains and galleries you can feel his need of peace and freedom for all.
Nevertheless, this is such an emotional book, beautifully written but damn short. :(
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I read a lot of WWII era historical fiction but this book was about a period that is seldom written about..the years following the War in Germany and the who, what, when, where, and how the Allies began to rebuild a broken country. The characters were very well fleshed out..as a military wife myself with 4 deployments under my belt I especially related to Rachael Morgan's character. Great historical fiction.
This book was a bit slow but it was a powerful story of the lives of people in war-town Germany. Motherless children, childless mothers, and fathers torn apart by grief collide trying to rediscover how to live. Who can you trust in post-Nazi Hamburg- orphaned children? The new British officers in control? What about your own wife? The range of characters was dynamic and gave different views into the world. I got a bit exhausted of everyone's drama and thought at times that it seemed there was too much going on to make sense of it all. But the ending was satisfying and a little heart-breaking, but everyone was better for it.
I saw the preview for the coming film, and I can't wait for it to come to theatres. As a fan of WWII novels, I was hooked.
I picked up the book for the Popsugar Reading Challenge. Initially, I was spurred on by the story. I wanted to know how Lewis, Rachael, their young son Edmund, Herr Lubert and his daughter Freda, and the periphery characters all interacted against the savage landscape of post-WWII Germany. This is the Europe, particularly the Germany, I want to know more about. Many novels cover the few years before the war and then during, with happy reunions or searing tragedy at the end. Not many discuss the post-war effect. Set in Hamburg, one of the worst Allied-bombed cities in Germany, the wounds on the landscape and the people, along with the issues brought on by occupation by America, Britain, France, and Russia, are taut and bursting. It was not a clean process. Russia wanted Germany to be weak in the knees. America wanted a strong Germany. What are the consequences of occupiers living in a land beaten to a pulp by them? Massive, really.
Lewis is a sympathizer, someone who understands that to work with the local people means they can help rebuild themselves. He feels for them and wants to be kind as best he can be. Rachael is grieving the death of her other son in an unintended German bombing. She and Edmund join Lewis in Hamburg, where a beautiful villa is requisitioned for their use. Lewis, unlike other British officers, allows the widowed Lubert and his daughter Freda stay with them in the attic rooms. Therein begins the tragedy, triumph, and beauty of human relationships despite the sense of one being an enemy.
There is the German resistance to the occupation, the haunting images of bodies in the rubble, and the Trummerkinder, the feral children without a home and parents, who haunt the edges of the story.
However engaging the story, I found the writing to be abrupt and choppy. Perspectives mixed without a clear changeover, I felt. The highbrow vocabulary seemed more appropriate for some characters and not for others. And Edmund's continued fascination with Freda's urine was just strange. I can understand maybe the first instant, but the way he kept remembering it ... hmm. Lewis felt like a massive pushover, and though he showed a raw side toward the end, I, like Rachael, wanted to shake him for some of his actions. And the Burnhams ... goodness, that woman and her husband. Neither of them were remotely redeeming, even when she made her confession to Rachael, I hardly felt sorry for her.
The ending was alright, and it gave some sense of conclusion. What ultimately happens to the British couples, one can only imagine.
I picked up the book for the Popsugar Reading Challenge. Initially, I was spurred on by the story. I wanted to know how Lewis, Rachael, their young son Edmund, Herr Lubert and his daughter Freda, and the periphery characters all interacted against the savage landscape of post-WWII Germany. This is the Europe, particularly the Germany, I want to know more about. Many novels cover the few years before the war and then during, with happy reunions or searing tragedy at the end. Not many discuss the post-war effect. Set in Hamburg, one of the worst Allied-bombed cities in Germany, the wounds on the landscape and the people, along with the issues brought on by occupation by America, Britain, France, and Russia, are taut and bursting. It was not a clean process. Russia wanted Germany to be weak in the knees. America wanted a strong Germany. What are the consequences of occupiers living in a land beaten to a pulp by them? Massive, really.
Lewis is a sympathizer, someone who understands that to work with the local people means they can help rebuild themselves. He feels for them and wants to be kind as best he can be. Rachael is grieving the death of her other son in an unintended German bombing. She and Edmund join Lewis in Hamburg, where a beautiful villa is requisitioned for their use. Lewis, unlike other British officers, allows the widowed Lubert and his daughter Freda stay with them in the attic rooms. Therein begins the tragedy, triumph, and beauty of human relationships despite the sense of one being an enemy.
There is the German resistance to the occupation, the haunting images of bodies in the rubble, and the Trummerkinder, the feral children without a home and parents, who haunt the edges of the story.
However engaging the story, I found the writing to be abrupt and choppy. Perspectives mixed without a clear changeover, I felt. The highbrow vocabulary seemed more appropriate for some characters and not for others. And Edmund's continued fascination with Freda's urine was just strange. I can understand maybe the first instant, but the way he kept remembering it ... hmm. Lewis felt like a massive pushover, and though he showed a raw side toward the end, I, like Rachael, wanted to shake him for some of his actions. And the Burnhams ... goodness, that woman and her husband. Neither of them were remotely redeeming, even when she made her confession to Rachael, I hardly felt sorry for her.
The ending was alright, and it gave some sense of conclusion. What ultimately happens to the British couples, one can only imagine.
I've had this book on my To Read shelf for several years and when i came across it at B&N for a great price, I jumped at it and was really looking forward to reading it. It left me disappointed. I read a LOT about WWII so the events of this book were not foreign to me, but aside from the 2 main male characters, the rest of the characters were just awful. It's not that they were unbelievable, it's that they were truly people that I would never want to personally know.
Lewis was basically a good man who wanted to see the best in everyone. His wife, Rachel, was a cold shell after they lost their oldest son in a bombing & resented her husband for making her move to the country responsible for Michael's death. Edmond, their remaining child may have been "just a child" but was also the 2nd most gullible character in the book.
Herr Lubert was a German man whose house was requisitioned for the above family to live in, but was allowed to stay. He was not associated with the Nazi regime, but was still suspected as such. His wife was caught in one of the fire bombings in Germany and presumed dead, but he still pines over her. Freda Lubert was a super brainwashed brat who wanted the "Werewolves" to succeed & resume the Nazi's work--she was just horrible & the most gullible character.
There was a group of orphans involved in the story that were just completely intolerable and I ended up basically skipping over their sections. I won't give this 1 star because the writing was good, but it doesn't deserve more than 2.
Lewis was basically a good man who wanted to see the best in everyone. His wife, Rachel, was a cold shell after they lost their oldest son in a bombing & resented her husband for making her move to the country responsible for Michael's death. Edmond, their remaining child may have been "just a child" but was also the 2nd most gullible character in the book.
Herr Lubert was a German man whose house was requisitioned for the above family to live in, but was allowed to stay. He was not associated with the Nazi regime, but was still suspected as such. His wife was caught in one of the fire bombings in Germany and presumed dead, but he still pines over her. Freda Lubert was a super brainwashed brat who wanted the "Werewolves" to succeed & resume the Nazi's work--she was just horrible & the most gullible character.
There was a group of orphans involved in the story that were just completely intolerable and I ended up basically skipping over their sections. I won't give this 1 star because the writing was good, but it doesn't deserve more than 2.
Kindle.
Love WW2 stories and this had a different angle of the post war rebuild. Was not super into any of the characters tho. They seemed flat at times or undeveloped or not tied together somehow?
Love WW2 stories and this had a different angle of the post war rebuild. Was not super into any of the characters tho. They seemed flat at times or undeveloped or not tied together somehow?
‘When the battle’s lost and won…’
The setting is post-WW2 Hamburg, a city destroyed by the Allied forces, where the inhabitants are not only struggling with poverty and homelessness, but are also trying to come to terms with the horrors they have lived through. Colonel Lewis Morgan of the occupying British forces is expecting the arrival of his wife and son and has been allocated a requisitioned house on the banks of the Elbe. But Morgan feels guilty about taking the home from its owner so, despite instructions that the occupiers shouldn’t fraternise with the locals, he invites Herr Lubert and his daughter to stay on and share the house.
The descriptions of life in Hamburg at this time are stark and horrifying, and very convincing. The author contrasts the somewhat pampered lives of the occupiers with the hardship of the locals, many of whom are not permitted to work until they have been cleared of involvement with the Nazis. We are shown the gangs of ‘feral’ children, orphaned and living rough, surviving by begging and stealing. The author, through Lewis, takes a sympathetic view of the defeated Germans and contrasts this with some of the Allied characters who feel that all Germans are culpable for the war and deserve its after-effects. Occasionally I felt he veered a little far in this direction and was in danger of making all the Germans wronged and good with all the Allies rapacious and bad, but it’s a fine line and he managed to walk it most of the time.
Where the book didn’t work so well for me was in the characterisation. It seemed as if the author had certain things he wanted to say, points he wanted to make, and had created his characters only to serve those purposes. Rachael, Lewis’ wife, is still grieving the loss of their eldest son in a bombing raid and at first finds the idea of fraternising with the Germans abhorrent. Her fairly rapid change of view was unconvincing. The same is true of the friendship struck up between Lewis’ son Edmund and the feral children. And Herr Lubert’s daughter, Freda, seemed to be no more than a cipher for disaffected youth. I expected this to be a moving read given the subject matter, but in fact I found it surprisingly unemotional, even cold. The blurb says it is being developed as a feature film by Ridley Scott’s company and I think it may work rather better as a film, with the added emotional depth a good cast might be able to bring to it.
Despite these criticisms, it is a well written and thought-provoking read that looks at the impact of the war from a slightly different viewpoint, and for these reasons is well worth reading.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
The setting is post-WW2 Hamburg, a city destroyed by the Allied forces, where the inhabitants are not only struggling with poverty and homelessness, but are also trying to come to terms with the horrors they have lived through. Colonel Lewis Morgan of the occupying British forces is expecting the arrival of his wife and son and has been allocated a requisitioned house on the banks of the Elbe. But Morgan feels guilty about taking the home from its owner so, despite instructions that the occupiers shouldn’t fraternise with the locals, he invites Herr Lubert and his daughter to stay on and share the house.
The descriptions of life in Hamburg at this time are stark and horrifying, and very convincing. The author contrasts the somewhat pampered lives of the occupiers with the hardship of the locals, many of whom are not permitted to work until they have been cleared of involvement with the Nazis. We are shown the gangs of ‘feral’ children, orphaned and living rough, surviving by begging and stealing. The author, through Lewis, takes a sympathetic view of the defeated Germans and contrasts this with some of the Allied characters who feel that all Germans are culpable for the war and deserve its after-effects. Occasionally I felt he veered a little far in this direction and was in danger of making all the Germans wronged and good with all the Allies rapacious and bad, but it’s a fine line and he managed to walk it most of the time.
Where the book didn’t work so well for me was in the characterisation. It seemed as if the author had certain things he wanted to say, points he wanted to make, and had created his characters only to serve those purposes. Rachael, Lewis’ wife, is still grieving the loss of their eldest son in a bombing raid and at first finds the idea of fraternising with the Germans abhorrent. Her fairly rapid change of view was unconvincing. The same is true of the friendship struck up between Lewis’ son Edmund and the feral children. And Herr Lubert’s daughter, Freda, seemed to be no more than a cipher for disaffected youth. I expected this to be a moving read given the subject matter, but in fact I found it surprisingly unemotional, even cold. The blurb says it is being developed as a feature film by Ridley Scott’s company and I think it may work rather better as a film, with the added emotional depth a good cast might be able to bring to it.
Despite these criticisms, it is a well written and thought-provoking read that looks at the impact of the war from a slightly different viewpoint, and for these reasons is well worth reading.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.