Scan barcode
celebrationofbooks's review
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
2.75
Like just about every other Nonfiction Book Club selection, I did a combination of listening to the audiobook versus reading the physical book. With A Bookshop in Berlin, I mostly listened, only reading when I had twenty pages left and book club was an hour away. The audiobook is very well done – I appreciated the narrator playing up the journal-esque aspect of the memoir as well.
For being called A Bookshop in Berlin, the bookshop really doesn’t play a part in the story after the first chapter and is used solely for contextual purposes of what started Francoise’s flight. In every other market, the book is called No Place to Lay My Head, or something akin to that, which we, as a book club, found to be a much more apt title. On a side note, when it comes to covers and titles pertaining to a book’s context, I’m sick and tired of every WWI/II book have silhouettes of Spitfires on their covers. As an aviation enthusiast, I find this incredibly misleading, but I digress. Collectively, we empathized with Francoise and had a very interesting discussion, the highlights of which I’ve detailed here.
Francoise was a Polish, Frecnch-speaking woman living in Berlin, operating a French language bookstore (with her husband) in the heart of the city in the years leading up to WWII. However, throughout the whole of the books, she never self-identifies herself Jewish (she periodically refers to being chased due to her “race”,) nor mentions her husband who fled before her and perished at Auschwitz. We had a few conclusions – particularly around whether she identified as a religious person or not (not) and if she needed to omit her husband to handle her grief (possible), but we still found both omissions rather strange.
For everything that Francoise went through, she was incredibly lucky. She was able to leave Berlin and get to France, was not rounded up by the Gestapo and managed to get out of their custody the one time she was called to the police station for an interrogation, and when forced to leave her accommodations in France, immediately found a couple not only to take her in, but support her various attempts to leave the country and get into Switzerland both monetarily and by helping her make connections. The role that luck played in Francoise story cannot be discounted in the least.
The couple who helped her also led us to question if people are inherently good. At a time when we are so polarized and retail workers and essential workers are screamed at daily by those who are having great difficultly dealing with the state of the world or have just plain forgotten how to be a decent human being, it can be very challenging to think of humanity as being generally decent, particularly are fellow man in America. We arrived at the conclusion that while we hope our fellow man will do the right thing, human beings are more likely to take the path of least resistance – the one that presents the lowest threat to their own wellbeing, even if it means going along with a regime you know to be oppressive to others even if you are not directly impacted. Which leads me to the last point I wish to bring up: When do you leave?
A few of the book club members put forth the question of why didn’t Francoise leave Germany, or even France, sooner. Hindsight is always twenty/twenty. When you want to be optimistic that things will get better, that the world can’t possibily devolve as much as it did, you don’t leave. You stay. You stand for your homeland until your homeland turns on you. When do you leave? Why don’t you leave at the first sign of trouble? Why haven’t my husband I left for Canada and his extended family in Mississauga, Ontario?
Because we have hope. We have hope that the election this year will have a different outcome than the one four years ago. We hope that we’ve been wrong about the emergence of WWIII these past years. Because we have hope that if we stay, we can change the country, and then the world for the better.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Genocide
joth1006's review against another edition
Litterärt inte det största jag läst, men känns angelägen på ett personligt plan: vi som jobbar med kultur, litteratur och bildning utgör en slags barrikad mot det kunskaps- och kulturförakt som extremhögern och borgligheten återigen håller på att hänge sig åt.
Angående boken så var det lite synd att Frenkel inte uppehöll sig längre kring partiet med bokhandeln, vilket för mig var romanens starkaste del.
Angående boken så var det lite synd att Frenkel inte uppehöll sig längre kring partiet med bokhandeln, vilket för mig var romanens starkaste del.
bookswithstacie's review
3.0
Ms. Frenkel was a Polish Jew who had set up a French bookstore in Berlin in 1921. Things were going well for her until the time Hitler comes to power and the pogroms against Jewish people start being enacted. She flees Berlin for France where the majority of her story takes place.
Ms. Frenkel has many friendships in France since she had spent significant time there and study there in her younger years. Her friends and others willing to help for money keep her safe until she can safely enter Switzerland.
I liked how each chapter was a new location for her, so that kept me wanting to read. It was an easy read as well. I gave this book three stars though because it was kind of boring. I am glad she makes it to safety, but the book is kind of just told in a matter of fact way. Also, I struggled knowing her age during her journey. Maybe if I had known she was in her 50's during this time I might have connected with her more.
I do love the idea that there could be more memoirs out there hidden or lost and we may have the chance to read them one of these days.
Ms. Frenkel has many friendships in France since she had spent significant time there and study there in her younger years. Her friends and others willing to help for money keep her safe until she can safely enter Switzerland.
I liked how each chapter was a new location for her, so that kept me wanting to read. It was an easy read as well. I gave this book three stars though because it was kind of boring. I am glad she makes it to safety, but the book is kind of just told in a matter of fact way.
Spoiler
When I get to the end of the book I learned that she had a husband who was arrested and disappeared in Berlin and that is never mentioned in the book. The end notes of the book does say what happened to her husband.I do love the idea that there could be more memoirs out there hidden or lost and we may have the chance to read them one of these days.
jessmferguson's review
4.0
The French version was rediscovered in an attic in 2010 and republished. The English edition begins with a preface introduction to Madam Frenkel, and the translation of her writing is beautiful. Despite the tragedies of the story chronicled, Frenkel celebrates the good she encounters during the war. My only issue is occasionally it feels as though she skips over details and generalizes events. I would have enjoyed reading more about the actual Berlin bookshop, and as the preface points out, she completely omits her spouse from the story. Also, I’m not sure why the new publication changes the title from the much more apt “No Place to Lay My Head.”
saunterer's review
4.0
A Bookshop in Berlin (publicada como Rien où poser ma tête en 1945) son las memorias de Françoise Frenkel, escritas poco después de escapar a Suiza y sobrevivir a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Frenkel, dueña de una librería francesa en Berlín, alterna momentos idílicos con sus clientes con momentos de terror, violencia y brutalidad. El libro abre una ventana a cómo cambió su vida bajo la influencia de los nazis, cómo reaccionó la gente ante ella y cómo la guerra alteró la visión del mundo de aquellos en su entorno inmediato.
En voz de Frenkel, el lector se adentra en una descripción detallada, escrita en una prosa lírica y expresiva, del declive de Europa a medida que cae bajo el control de Hitler.
En voz de Frenkel, el lector se adentra en una descripción detallada, escrita en una prosa lírica y expresiva, del declive de Europa a medida que cae bajo el control de Hitler.
loulamaga's review against another edition
3.0
Aunque lo leí con la ilusión de que fuese un libro de librerías para mi colección, la librería, incluso los libros, no cobran relevancia en este texto. Lo que cobra importancia es la persecución y la huída.
La perspectiva de Francoise sobre esa persecución, al menos en el texto, es casi ecuánime. Aunque podemos sentir la frustración, la debilidad y temor, no es aterrador; no es cruento al detalle, pero sí irritante.
Los detalles están en esas pequeñas decisiones de los nazis sobre las pertenencias de los judíos, sobre los sellos que deben reunir como salvoconductos, sobre los lugares dónde estar y dónde no. Detrás de ellos adivinamos la maldad y el terror, pero no nos altera como el terror de las películas de Hollywood, es más una denuncia social que irrita, molesta y alerta.
Es una historia dura, con un narrador suave.
Y el final es tan breve y a la vez tan conmovedor, tan súbito pero tan esperado que conmociona.
La perspectiva de Francoise sobre esa persecución, al menos en el texto, es casi ecuánime. Aunque podemos sentir la frustración, la debilidad y temor, no es aterrador; no es cruento al detalle, pero sí irritante.
Los detalles están en esas pequeñas decisiones de los nazis sobre las pertenencias de los judíos, sobre los sellos que deben reunir como salvoconductos, sobre los lugares dónde estar y dónde no. Detrás de ellos adivinamos la maldad y el terror, pero no nos altera como el terror de las películas de Hollywood, es más una denuncia social que irrita, molesta y alerta.
Es una historia dura, con un narrador suave.
Y el final es tan breve y a la vez tan conmovedor, tan súbito pero tan esperado que conmociona.
abookishtype's review
3.0
Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano explains in the preface to A Bookshop in Berlin that the memoir was written shortly after the author, Françoise Frenkel, escaped to Switzerland and survived the end of World War II. The memoir was originally published as Rien où poser ma tête. The French translates to “nowhere to rest my head,” a fitting title considering that the book catalogs Frenkel’s efforts to stay ahead of the Holocaust. With the help of brave French citizens who hid her and helped her eventually escape to Switzerland, Frenkel travels over the course of 1939 to 1943 from Berlin to Paris, to Nice, to Grenoble and Annecy, near the Swiss border. Unlike so many millions, Frenkel survived...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
nora28's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced