A review by thebooktrail88
The Field by Robert Seethaler

3.0

Booktrail the locations in The Field

Interesting premise but a bit morbid. In the fictional town of Paulstadt in Germany, a patch of land has been set aside to bury its dead. These people then rest there at the heart of their community and through their voices from beyond the grave tell the stories you discover in this book. It’s not really a novel, more a series of vignettes of lives lived, histories shared and a display of how time and place passes and changes each and every one of us.

It’s clever how Paulstadt is fictional as this helps to ground the novel in a place, any place, so that this novel transcends both its fictional and physical borders. The emotional borders are the most heartbreaking though.

The reading experience was unique but fleeting. It’s akin to wandering in a cemetery and having each of the people buried below tell you their story. Brief and affecting but once you leave that cemetery, the mist descends and you are left with an overall picture of lives lived and faded memories fluttering in the air.