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sofiehaluzan's review against another edition
challenging
funny
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
pip94's review
3.0
This was a good historical fiction set at the end of WW2. I personally found the narrative style a little jarring, so it took me quite some time to get into this book. The characters were well written but I felt very little connection with any of them. It is an interesting read as you get a look into the life of a German family during the last years of the war, but although it was interesting I didn't find it particularly engaging at times. I found it dragged at certain points. Overall I thought this was a good book but I didn't love it.
isa_bell95's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
ianfjanssen's review against another edition
4.0
Overall this is a memorable book. Set on the East Prussian frontier in early 1945, anybody familiar with the history of this period already knows the setting if not the main arc of the plot. It is a bit like reading about the sinking of the Titanic - after a slow, meandering start increasingly filled with dread, denial, and confusion, then the tragic end comes with accelerating horror, this time in the form of the approaching Soviet forces. However, this is not a book of outsized emotions or overwrought moralizing; it is very subtle, either understated or blankly matter-of-factedly stated in its approach to German life in the final days of the Nazi empire.
Since this largely is not a novel read for plot, its success must be found elsewhere, in this case in its characters and storytelling. Kempowski's characters are expertly built, even if on occasion they swerve off the road into caricature, and towards the end he kills them off in an almost desultory fashion. I still can hear my Westphalian grandmother's voice in that of the Silesian "Auntie" ("Nothing's easy!"). The author's narratological voice shifts many times between the characters, but not so much as the thread of the story cannot be followed. Taken together with the stories of and interactions with the odd stream of refugees that pass through the decrepit Georgenhof manor house, the novel yields an intricate depiction of the German middle class and the lower rungs of the upper class in utter disorientation and denial about their predicament at the end of the war. Kempowski reveals a society caught in its own absurd web, a crass society that abandoned whatever moral compass it may have had long before the outbreak of the war, perhaps without fully understanding that they were abandoning it and certainly not remembering any of it by 1945. I am not sure what the German phrase for "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" is, but it would be apt here. The near constant emphasis among the characters on sorting out and protecting one's worldly belongings - be it stamp collections, silverware, museum artifacts, toy locomotives - in the face of impending apocalypse and annihilation is striking. These are people being sucked down the drain by historical forces of epic proportions, yet continue to be the people they were before and will be until the end, oblivious to their own society's guilt and still unwilling to comprehend the nightmare swiftly becoming their reality.
If the reader is searching for a full-throated, overt, heavy-handed excoriation of the German people for their sins, this is not that book. Again, it is muted and subtle in its attack and judgment; it is not a sermon. The concentration camp inmates and the Russian POWs dwell mainly at the peripheries of this story, perhaps too much at the peripheries for some. Two problems stuck out for me. First, while Kempowski shifts the narrator's voice consistently among the characters, it is clear that if there is any central voice it is that of Peter, the young son of the von Globig family; this is especially clear toward the story's end. In doing so, Kempowski selected what can be regarded as an 'innocent' - a noncombatant, a child too young even for service in the Hitler Youth (despite the authorities' attempts to prove otherwise). In doing so, the author missed an opportunity to speak to the corruption and demise of German society through a more mature character, one more clouded by a lens of personal and national histories and experiences. It is not that Peter's appraisal of the situation is muted or understated, but rather that he is incapable to rendering that judgment at all. Finally, without disclosing too much, there is a plot device wherein Peter's mother finds herself imprisoned with the foreign POWs and concentration camp prisoners; without elaboration, in my estimation this device did not work.
Those are my offhand thoughts. It has been noted that little of Kempowski's work has been translated into English, which seems a shame. I wonder how much of a mirror it would hold for modern life in an age of resurgent fascism.
Since this largely is not a novel read for plot, its success must be found elsewhere, in this case in its characters and storytelling. Kempowski's characters are expertly built, even if on occasion they swerve off the road into caricature, and towards the end he kills them off in an almost desultory fashion. I still can hear my Westphalian grandmother's voice in that of the Silesian "Auntie" ("Nothing's easy!"). The author's narratological voice shifts many times between the characters, but not so much as the thread of the story cannot be followed. Taken together with the stories of and interactions with the odd stream of refugees that pass through the decrepit Georgenhof manor house, the novel yields an intricate depiction of the German middle class and the lower rungs of the upper class in utter disorientation and denial about their predicament at the end of the war. Kempowski reveals a society caught in its own absurd web, a crass society that abandoned whatever moral compass it may have had long before the outbreak of the war, perhaps without fully understanding that they were abandoning it and certainly not remembering any of it by 1945. I am not sure what the German phrase for "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" is, but it would be apt here. The near constant emphasis among the characters on sorting out and protecting one's worldly belongings - be it stamp collections, silverware, museum artifacts, toy locomotives - in the face of impending apocalypse and annihilation is striking. These are people being sucked down the drain by historical forces of epic proportions, yet continue to be the people they were before and will be until the end, oblivious to their own society's guilt and still unwilling to comprehend the nightmare swiftly becoming their reality.
If the reader is searching for a full-throated, overt, heavy-handed excoriation of the German people for their sins, this is not that book. Again, it is muted and subtle in its attack and judgment; it is not a sermon. The concentration camp inmates and the Russian POWs dwell mainly at the peripheries of this story, perhaps too much at the peripheries for some. Two problems stuck out for me. First, while Kempowski shifts the narrator's voice consistently among the characters, it is clear that if there is any central voice it is that of Peter, the young son of the von Globig family; this is especially clear toward the story's end. In doing so, Kempowski selected what can be regarded as an 'innocent' - a noncombatant, a child too young even for service in the Hitler Youth (despite the authorities' attempts to prove otherwise). In doing so, the author missed an opportunity to speak to the corruption and demise of German society through a more mature character, one more clouded by a lens of personal and national histories and experiences. It is not that Peter's appraisal of the situation is muted or understated, but rather that he is incapable to rendering that judgment at all. Finally, without disclosing too much, there is a plot device wherein Peter's mother finds herself imprisoned with the foreign POWs and concentration camp prisoners; without elaboration, in my estimation this device did not work.
Those are my offhand thoughts. It has been noted that little of Kempowski's work has been translated into English, which seems a shame. I wonder how much of a mirror it would hold for modern life in an age of resurgent fascism.
msaid2's review against another edition
5.0
Really beautiful book. Shifting point of view. Wry, detached tone describing the impending arrival of the Russians in 1945 to an old manor house in East Prussia, as the inhabitants, and an increasing number of visitors, wonder what to do.
abeanbg's review against another edition
5.0
This was a fascinating novel. Kempowski settles us into a grand old manor house in East Prussia at the start of 1945. We all know what's coming, on some level many of these characters know as well, but their world continues to waltz along like nothing much is amiss. The people inside the Georgenhoff and its frequent visitors are a fascinating band, as petty, self-obsessed, curious, venal, and charitable as we all are. Then history plays its hand and everything is swept away in a sea of horse-drawn carts, violence, and random ugly chance. Loved the ambiguity of the ending as well. Also, this makes for a fascinating comparison to E.L. Doctorow's The March and Gone With the Wind.