I am not in the right reading mood lately! Books aren't sitting right with me. I need to go to reading therapy and figure out what's going on.
I've hadI am not in the right reading mood lately! Books aren't sitting right with me. I need to go to reading therapy and figure out what's going on.
I've had this borrowed from my friend for a whole year now; does this ever happen to you? She brought it over, so we could share.
Okay.
This is a really beautiful book. It is so well-written. The language is loving and rich. It's atmospheric and thoughtful; the characters are complex and relatable. Why didn't I love it? I don't know. It is totally fine! Don't worry. I'm in a funk, book.
This is one of those novels that follows its protagonist right from her birth. Trudi is still a small child for such a long time, for a huge portion of the novel. It doesn't skip any time in her life, treating the experiences of her childhood just as heavily in importance as the experiences Trudi has as an adult during wartime. And that's a weight indeed.
Trudi's childhood is not battle-less. She is born with dwarfism and there isn't really a time ever that she isn't dealing with the way that being different affects her. It's fascinating, of course, how we get to see Trudi come up against her feelings time and again, for very good reasons and bad ones. So believably, and in ways I can totally identify with, she grows up into a person who is both extraordinarily compassionate and also extraordinarily defensive. She also carries something very, very heavy with her into adulthood, a traumatizing experience in her adolescence that is so difficult, so difficult. Her personality is so well-drawn, it's fantastic. I understand why she is some readers' favorite character ever.
I have to admit, I was surprised how little Trudi's dwarfism mattered in the eyes of the Nazis in her town. As they gradually and cruelly blur the boundaries of what people they consider bad for Germany, and more people from the town are taken away (sometimes for nothing), I fully expected someone to turn on her. The novel dwells a good bit on the creepy emphasis that the Nazi-imposed culture placed on motherhood and, er, breeding. Yet, her physical differences are only brought up once in connection with politics, when an officer insults her (while intimating that he could do much worse). As is often the case in literature, Trudi's differences make her who she is, inside and out, and that's why she's important to us as a protagonist. I was sure that part of what would make our closeness with Trudi feel powerful in the story would be when the biggest fact of her life (her size) was transformed into a threat. But that didn't happen. Which is okay — I felt like I was braced for one blow that didn't come.
(Um, I did Google "Nazi Germany dwarfism" to learn a little bit more about real circumstances, but you know — be ready.)
Actually… I'm not sure how to explain this. But this book gave me one of those little wake-up moments where the realness of Hitler and the Holocaust leaked through and made me think, wow. WOW. Wow. Don't we all feel this way? This subject is very big. These facts are very hard. We know so much about it, too much to keep turned "on" in our minds at all times, I think. We intellectualize so we can stand to learn more. And the farther away we get, we rely a lot on fictional (or semi-autobiographical) narratives to explore the feelings we need to remember. But: sometimes it leaks back out of its container inside you, and makes you look around. These things truly happened, around people like me. It hurts and scares me. That's what it makes me think, that's what needs remembering. Who, who would know what to do?
Similarly, I do feel like mentioning that at times I felt on the edge of exasperation that the politics of the characters were a little too facile, in that the already-frustrating characters became Nazi supporters, and the wonderful Trudi and her father unwaveringly against. Trudi and her father are wonderful, they're great people, and it isn't surprising that they care and follow their instincts to be helpful. But… still. They practically never suffer a moment of keeping silence out of fear. Other sympathetic characters do, but not them. Nope. Trudi seems to have premonitions, sometimes, and while that could be kind of interesting… it really just means that she always makes the right choices. And she always gets out of trouble.
The real job of the book, I believe, is to give us this very normal portrait of life in a small village, in a place where people are not used to being bothered, and then let war creep in. We slowly watch it all happen, through the lens of this one place. It's really effective at this, spending decades with them (though for all the time I spent with them, I could never remember anyone's names), and knowing them so well. We get somewhere. The ending was kind of a puzzler, actually, but I was just glad to be there....more
Funnily, I'd never heard of this book before it was put in my hands a couple months ago. Popular though it is, it was off my radar. I can see why so mFunnily, I'd never heard of this book before it was put in my hands a couple months ago. Popular though it is, it was off my radar. I can see why so many like it, though, because it fits in a really nice place, as a book! Like probably most American readers these days, I don't know a ton (or anything) about the Channel Islands (British dependencies, but nearer to France) or their wartime German occupation. And actually, it's a really happy book.
My friend who lent this to me told me, "This book made me want to move to the Channel Islands and fall in love." These days I am a lot mushier than I used to be, so that sounded like a perfectly fine recommendation to me. In fact I thought it would be moreso, lusher and romantic. But via the epistolary format, it comes out just a bit girl-talkish and is probably its weakest element. Not quite enough whatever it is, longing looks.
It does, to use a phrase that gets a bad rap, romanticize the setting, and to a certain extent even the war. The characters have experienced some hardship and grief and loss, but in a way, just enough of just the right kind. Not so much that their lives are ruined, but enough to make them good characters with good stories to tell, and boatloads of dignity and pathos. I suppose you could read it as cheap, but also, it's nice. A way of showing that people do well with each other.
What you've really got here is straight and good wish-fulfillment, which also gets a bad rap in fiction. It's usually a criticism, but with this book it was just pleasing. Which is the entire point: wish-fulfillment gives you a story about something that most everyone would love to have happen to them in real life. Duh. That is often quite lovely. And that's precisely what you want as you read this. It would be perfectly awesome to enter Juliet's shoes. I'd take it. I might want to bring the internet with me, and a few books newer than 1946, but. (Read: I will totally go see Kate Winslet play her in the movie, come on.)
So, yes, perhaps things go a little too well and everyone is a little too nice, but the book will make you happy. In a way it reminds me of something a bit like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, one of those sweet books that's both extremely optimistic and honest at the same time. There's a spot, it hits, it's good....more
I bought this book for a friend's Christmas present, but since we still have not been able to visit each other it shall sit on my shelf a while longerI bought this book for a friend's Christmas present, but since we still have not been able to visit each other it shall sit on my shelf a while longer, so, why not! (She won't mind.)
I am giving this book one whole extra star just for wish-fulfillment appreciation. I really do appreciate it. I am also recommending that everyone who lives or has lived in New York City read the first chapter or two of this book. It's not that the rest of it isn't interesting too, but I was so surprised by the setup to the main subject of the book. The way she describes her prior life in NYC, deciding to leave it for its opposite on a whim, and what changes it makes to a person, is just really accurate. You can tell she really has been one of us, and has found the other side of the coin that we often wonder about. Her willingness to strike out and perform tasks and jobs and bonds she's never been near before is as much a perfect wish-fulfillment story as when you are having the kind of day where you are saying, "I hate everything, I am going to go live in a cabin with a coyote." (That is all of us, right? We can admit it.)
So you get a little memoir-type picture of who she is and what she's caring about -- the parts about her relationship aren't necessarily riveting, but it's nice knowing what means something to her in the context of all this. The coyote stuff! Because mostly, there's a bunch of stories about what it is like to have a coyote puppy, what she improvises to make this part of her life, and why she loves it and makes it work. I was surprised and interested that this also isn't just wish-fulfillment; the parts about dealing with unexpected aggression and coyote communication errors are intense. (To prove, in fact, we don't all necessarily want this to really happen. Well kind of.)
Some parts of the narrative are dull -- it is boring to me to read a book by a blogger who then has to talk about how they started the blog and found an audience. I guess they're obligated to explain this part of the story, but obviously it's an unsurprising part. Some other parts were unexpectedly strong, though -- in characterizing her setting, it made an impact to learn some of the threads of what it actually meant, in her new environment and society, to accept an animal for a pet that your neighbors expect you to want to kill. The familiarity of animals like coyotes in the places where they actually are makes them an unpopular pest; they are not romanticized when they are actually messing up your life. So her connection both to the wild animal and the meaning of the new place is a good theme, part of the theme in the beginning about her move, crossing boundaries.
It can be nice to see idealism work once in a while....more
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