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Title: Stones from the River
Author: Ursula Hegi
# of Pages: 525
Summary (from amazon.com): Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River clamors for comparisons to Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum; her protagonist Trudi Montag--like the unforgettable Oskar Mazerath--is a dwarf living in Germany during the two World Wars. To its credit, Stones does not wilt from the comparison. Hegi's book has a distinctive, appealing flavor of its own. Stone's characters are off-center enough to hold your attention despite the inevitable dominance of the setting: There's Trudi's mother, who slowly goes insane living in an "earth nest" beneath the family house; Trudi's best friend Georg, whose parents dress him as the girl they always wanted; and, of course, Trudi herself, whose condition dooms her to long for an impossible normalcy. Futhermore, the reader's inevitable sympathy for Trudi, the dwarf, heightens the true grotesqueness of Nazi Germany. Stones from the River is a nightmare journey with an unforgettable guide.
Opinion: I picked up this book a few years ago when I found a bag of books discarded out in the morning trash for pick up. Unable to abide by seeing books thrown out, I took it home with me and for one reason or another only got around to reading it recently. I didn't know what to expect from this book, but I truly loved the character of Trudi and hearing the story of WWII in a tiny German village from her perspective, not only as a German, but as a dwarf - someone who has been 'othered' all her life. I liked the flow of the story, how each characters has their own story and struggles, and how Trudi as a storyteller is able to weave them all together. It was a really lovely book about a really horrendous time in history.
Now Reading: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
x-posted to my journal