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A review by gadicohen93
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
4.0
A retired man, a widower, adopts a community of African refugees in Berlin of the 2010s. It is a beautiful book. I particularly loved the moments of reflection, the man thinking on his life, relating on his pain and on the extraordinary pain of his new friends, who exist in the legal and geographical limbo of asylum seekers in the EU.
Perhaps it seemed a bit ordinary, a type of book I've read before — "white savior" complex-y, I guess, a man who through conversations with people different than him becomes kinder, happier. The poor black refugees, hated and despised in Germany, and yet he shelters them, and in turn is elevated by them! In this sense the story felt tired. Though the texture — the setting of Berlin, parallels to re-unification — made it feel real.
The voice is distant, detached from Richard, so much so that some of the other more grabbing scenes were the narratives of the refugees he meets, stories so harrowing — the boats capsizing, the fighting in Libya — that it's impossible not to scour the dialogue for its effect on Richard. The writing is simple but flows, with moments of symbolism and rich philosophical musing.
Perhaps it seemed a bit ordinary, a type of book I've read before — "white savior" complex-y, I guess, a man who through conversations with people different than him becomes kinder, happier. The poor black refugees, hated and despised in Germany, and yet he shelters them, and in turn is elevated by them! In this sense the story felt tired. Though the texture — the setting of Berlin, parallels to re-unification — made it feel real.
The voice is distant, detached from Richard, so much so that some of the other more grabbing scenes were the narratives of the refugees he meets, stories so harrowing — the boats capsizing, the fighting in Libya — that it's impossible not to scour the dialogue for its effect on Richard. The writing is simple but flows, with moments of symbolism and rich philosophical musing.