pickJust finished this beautiful story. A three-timeline plot, set before, during, and immediately after WWII in Germany, it follows two sisters and the woman who comes across a book tied to them. It‘s heart wrenching and uplifting at the same time. So glad I read this.
#Bibliophile #ZInTitle I read this years ago and really liked it . Captures the culture of Germany between the Wars .Rainer Werner Fassbinder did a 15 hour film version of this book. This book was also in the list of titles in this week‘s #ThreeListThursday quiz. Franz is out of prison, trying to built a life , gangsters, petty thieves,unemployment lines,& other challenges stand in the way of his stability.
pickHans Fallada survived Nazi Germany, wrote a novel based on the story of Otto and Elise Hampel in 24 days, and then died before its publication. If that wasn‘t tragic enough, his depiction of the grinding away of morality, loyalty, and self-respect to leave a society immersed in fear and loathing is exceptional.
On the way home from ballet rehearsal on Sunday I visited 2 different Little Free Libraries. These were my spoils. 5.5 hours of ballet done this weekend ✅. I‘m a bit sore as I had a bit of a rest in the school holidays just gone.
pickThis is a soft pick. It is incredibly well written, in parts it was over my head with cultural & historical references, sometimes fascinatingly so & sometimes it began to feel too much & meaningless. It did some truly interesting things with form in the second half of the book - with repetition & alternating pov between paragraphs - giving you real time variances between the two protagonists. But the relationship! I felt so disturbed ⬇️
You, the gentrifier, have now been gentrified.... once every ten years, you should have a reunion and bitterly reminisce, clutching your paper cups of Moscow mule and growling about how this town's landlords and businesses put cash before community. At the end of the evening you should stand in a long line, in the order that your spending powers evolved to claim the city
pickA love affair that goes sour against the backdrop of the tumult of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The landscape of their relationship is mirrored in the political landscape of the time - tense, contentious, fragile, and fractured. Definitely a unique read and was wholly engaging. The writing style is engrossing.
Before they leave, you meet them for coffee and you understand then that they were always wary of Berlin, that they never committed themselves to a city that in turn never really committed to them. For all the talk of people ignoring each other at the end of relationships, it's Berlin which is the true ghost, drawing you in with a flurry of wild promises, and then abruptly losing interest.
