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mastersal 's review for:
Address Unknown
by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
This little short story (not novel) is a series of letters written between two German friends, which was interesting. The story was written in 1932 which is probably the most fascinating thing about the book. The author “was writing about the present, about what she observed and understood in the world around her. The rapturous reception the novel received … suggests that she was not alone in her awareness of what was happening in Europe…” (from the introduction).
The story is pretty simple and wasn’t particularly shocking because of the benefit of hindsight. None of it really was “new” to me and the length meant that I didn’t really connect. But in context of when this was written and the questions about “How do we know what we know, and when do we know it? Why does a good person become a bad person? What power does a citizen have against the state?” are all fascinating.
In the end I am going with 3.0 stars mostly because of the historical impact and the contemporaneous picture it provides of people who were concerned about what was happening in Germany while it was happening.
From a pure literary taste perspective however, the story was too short for me. It’s worth checking out as a piece of history and the caution it provides for us as to the fracturing of civil society as scary and a sign of times to come.
The story is pretty simple and wasn’t particularly shocking because of the benefit of hindsight. None of it really was “new” to me and the length meant that I didn’t really connect. But in context of when this was written and the questions about “How do we know what we know, and when do we know it? Why does a good person become a bad person? What power does a citizen have against the state?” are all fascinating.
In the end I am going with 3.0 stars mostly because of the historical impact and the contemporaneous picture it provides of people who were concerned about what was happening in Germany while it was happening.
From a pure literary taste perspective however, the story was too short for me. It’s worth checking out as a piece of history and the caution it provides for us as to the fracturing of civil society as scary and a sign of times to come.