Laurie H. (lah) reviewed on 12/12/2008 + 37 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

This is a short novel that in many ways reads more like a collection of essays. It's a series of short vignettes about the people who live in a small German town in the 1950s. The narrator is a teenage girl, born just after WWII, and much of the novel deals with the consequences of war for the various townspeople. This is a town populated by a truly eclectic cast of characters. Hegi does an excellent job of delving deep into and developing each of her characters and their relationships to one another. This is the same town that was the focus of Hegi's novel Stones from the River, which is set in the same town in the interwar period and WWII. Some of the characters appear also in Stones, some do not, and they don't necessarily occupy the same places in each book. Trudi Montag, the central character in Stones from the River is far less sympathetic and far less interesting in this book. From publication dates it appears that Hegi wrote this book before she wrote Stones from the River, though I read them in the opposite order. The characters and life of the town are far more fully developed in Stones, though character development is still clearly Hegi's forte, even in this book. For those interested in Hegi's work, I recommend reading Stones first. Had I not had the background I did from Stones, I think I would have found this book less interesting.

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