2008-04-09 Whats that all about?

I bought this book about 8 months ago and only got around to reading it recently. It came highly recommended to me by a number of people who had read it. I must confess that when I had got over the idea that I had to like it, I realised that it just didn't live up to expectations at all. The premise of the book is good. It tells the a story of how the War affected ordinary German citizens. It debunks the myth that everyone in Germany during the war was a Nazi sympathiser, and and that overnight they all became "bad" people. This is interesting and a subject that I think deserves more attention from writers in general. But the book is badly constructed. It's deficiencies are added to by a bizarre narration by "Death",which is intensely annoying as almost every chapter he has a litle diatribe about the meaning of certain words or little clues about who is going to die when and also at times it's like he is addressing the narration to children and talks in a patronising way. I also felt that some of the main charachters were scarcely believable. They just don't behave the way kids of that age behave. They are heavily laden with pointless idiosyncracies. There are good points to the book as well and I found the grown up charachters to be a little more believable. But the fact that every piece of dialogue ends with the words "saumench" or "saukerl" or "arschloch" is extremely irritating. It's a shame, without the "Narrator", with a little more realism injected into the child charachters, I think that the book could have gone somewhere important. As it is I can't really say that I enjoyed it. To be fair to the author, his ability is not in question, although I haven't read any of his other books it is obvious that he has what it takes. I just think he made a few executive decisions regarding this book which didn't work out.

A far better book I felt was The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. A similar story, told from an unusual viewpoint. About one third the size of this book, but gets the message across far more effectively and leaves a longer lasting impression.