lyndsaybh 's review for:

Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann

5.0

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I have loved everything I've read by Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig (and have just started reading Irmgard Keun), and am particularly fascinated by inter-war Europe so this was right up my alley. The writing is economical and precise but also beautiful, threaded with fascinating details throughout. You know as you read that with every page you are coming closer to tragedy - much as the writers probably felt with each day that passed in Ostend that summer. Really excellent, written without melodrama or theatrics but just quietly affecting. This could easily have been 500 pages and probably just as good, but it feels like quite an achievement to have packed so much into a 172 page book.