Empty Hearts - Juli Zeh

I didn't quite know what to read at some point this summer, so I landed on another book by Juli Zeh as I had greatly enjoyed Unterleuten. 

Empty Hearts wasn't quite as good a read. The wacky premise (an agency that identifies, recruits and trains potential suicidal terrorists to then assign to organizations) reminded me a bit of some of Franzen's most original plot twists. The problem for me, however, was that it's something that becomes very quickly hard to sustain and would place any author in danger of having to jump the shark in order to reach some sort of conclusion. 

And ultimately Juli Zeh jumps the shark here, without great results (at least for me). 

Cassandra - Christa Wolf

Why did I have to spend years being taught - and being made to absolutely hate - ancient Greek grammar, instead of spending more time actually learning their (hi)stories?

Seriously, had a teacher ever thought of making me read this book (instead of memorizing μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος and repeating it like a parrot!) I would have actually quickly grown to like - and later most likely to love - Greek mythology. 

Instead, it took my 36 years to get closer to the life, troubles, thoughts and loves of some of the most fascinating characters ever produced by the human imagination. My daughters (aged 3 and 6 now) ask to be read stories from a children's version of The Odyssey before bed and won't have to study ancient Greek unless they really, really want to - who knows how that will work out!

Unterleuten - Juli Zhe

 

The joy of having a) a well-stocked e-library, and b) a former student helper with a cultural profile that very few undergraduates can match. I don't think I've ever read a German book besides the canonical 20th century classics, because I liked them, and Young Werther, because why not...

I was surprised by how easy I found it to get into the rhythm of the book, despite what is for me an unusual setting. Possibly, if I knew something more about German literature or the reality of the former DDR I could have found more to criticize, but instead, with my limited knowledge, I found this book to be the equivalent of a good Franzen novel in old Europe, with generational clashes, contemporary issues and historical animosities that are grippling and relatable. 

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum - Heinrich Böll

I thought Group Portrait with Lady was too long and lost its magic in the final 50 pages. I now think that The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is too short and never gets to have much magic in the first place.

As usual, this is a novel about ordinary German people in turbulent times, but either because of its shortness or because of the historical period (though, being Italian, I would have expected to find its take on German political terrorism in the 1970s more interesting), I found this book, for want of a better term, a bit "hmpf"...

And I am now leaving this post much like the book itself - short and a bit pointless

Diary – Anne Frank

I had never read this book chiefly because I had a wonderful middle-school teacher who had us watch the great 1959 movie (in the same year she had us watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo, Norman Jewison’s Hurricane, Barry Levinson’s Sleepers, study in depth the Arab-Israeli conflict, and plenty of other things – easily the best teacher I’ve ever had while in Italy).

How does one actually read Anne Frank’s diary? Again a rather problematic philological issue: she wrote it thinking that she would share it with posterity herself, but everyone knows how her life ended and I’m not sure any reader can read the diary without constantly remembering that the SS will eventually breach into the Franks’ hiding place.

Regardless of that, and regardless of how heavily or not the diary/diaries might have been edited, this book remains an exceptional read. It is undeniably extremely well-written, and knowing Anna’s tragic end makes her comments about love appear even more cute (for want of a better term). I am not going to comment on her political acumen, because after all we are talking about a young girl who found herself locked in a flat for two years, but her personal observations  on the attitudes of her family and the other people around them can remain a priceless primary source for any young historian studying the Second World War. Too bad my own students probably don’t even manage to read a book a year. 

Group Portrait with Lady - Heinrich Böll

One of those books that I literally couldn’t put down (well, if you ask my wife, that’s about any book, except for the remarkably bad ones that I am forced to read for my office’s book club – this month was the turn of The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, the most offensively patronizing piece of poo poo I’ve ever read, seriously!).

Back on topic. The novel is clearly, yet again, about WWII and Nazifascism (amongst other things). Its approach (a literary mockumentary?) remains hilarious and alternative more than forty years after the book’s publication. In the novel Böll manages to write, always with a hint of irony, some of the most touching pages I’ve ever read (in particular the coffee scene and the singing by Boris, the Soviet POW and real love of Leni’s life) and simultaneously throw in some remarkably humorous comments (at a certain point the author’s research was delayed by his watching the Clay-Frazier fight…).

And the idea that the entire book revolves not just around a normal person, but around one who says so little about herself that it can be contained in one quick page in the middle of the book, is, in my humble opinion, an absolute stroke of genius. Well, that’s actually not just my humble opinion probably; Böll did receive the Nobel Prize after Group Portrait with Lady after all…

Cat and Mouse - Günter Grass

It was rather surprising to read such a short – and fundamentally simple and linear – novella by Grass after powering through the hefty (yet absolutely wonderful) The Tin Drum. The links between the two are many: clearly the setting, but also the unreliability of the narrator (Pilenz is not as unruly as Oskar, yet his desire to justify himself makes the reader question whether or not he is telling the whole truth, or just his own) not to mention the fact that Oskar himself does make a couple of appearances in the book (something I could have done without, as I saw little need for such explicit tribute).

The intimacy of the novella is very touching, as well as the narrator’s decision to directly address Mahlke time and again. The innocence of the two main characters is lost in the 140 pages of the book, but, given the setting, no reader could – or should – make a moral judgement (even when Pilenz writes that he hopes not to have said anything that might have damaged his freemason teacher, or when Mahlke takes his dramatic decisions in the last few pages).

Throughout the book the reader knows perfectly well that things are going to take a turn for the worse, but the sadness of the last couple of pages is something that is absolutely lacerating for a book about teenagers growing up together. 

Siddahrta – Hermann Hesse

Dare I say it, but I have the feeling that oriental mysticism transposed into Western culture often serves to hide the (spiritual) emptiness of our society. And Siddahrta, to me, is to a large extent a reflection of a readership that turns Eastwards to find a meaning to an otherwise fairly hollow existence.

I am being dreadfully harsh, I know, but I’d rather leave traditions where they are, without indiscriminately borrowing from them and watering down their unquestionable meaningfulness.

I am probably questioning the people who love Siddahrta more than the book itself, but I have the feeling that, in 1922, the novel might have actually had much more literary weight than it does now.

The Clown – Heinrich Böll

The horror. I remember my jaw dropping, and my heart sinking, as I was reading this book as a (very pretentious and yet somehow dramatically uncool) teenager but I now can’t remember a thing about the book.

Going through the Wikipedia synopsis, I have the feeling that maybe I loved the book for the way in which Hans’s life is essentially destroyed by the Catholic Church, one way or another. Or maybe it made me feel happy to read about his sentimental fiascos at a time in which I pretty much couldn’t get close to a girl unless I paid her (figuratively speaking, by the way).

Unfortunately, since I can’t remember much, “all those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain” (luckily, it’s not time to die, hopefully at least).

The Tin Drum – Günter Grass

One of the greatest novels I’ve ever read. Too bad it’s one book too long (I didn’t really see much of a point in the chapters on the early Cold War in Europe, probably because I find that to be a rather boring period).

Personally, I think the most significant feature of the novel is the self-portrayal of the narrator, Oskar, a character the reader initially wants to hug and cuddle, and later ends up distrusting and stepping away from. Oskar is simultaneously acute enough to decide to stop growing when he is a 3-year old disgusted by the world, and selfishly childish enough to cause the death of his two potential fathers. When I came to the realization he was responsible for the two deaths (something that I would have probably denied, had it not been for the fact that Oskar highlights it, at times with remorse, at times as a matter of fact) I was almost in tears.

Because of its size, and despite its undeniable qualities, this is a book that I had to read over the span of a week. Prolonging the anxiety for that long was really rather intense and this was a book that ended up affecting my mood throughout those days.

Death in Venice – Thomas Mann

I have a list of books that I intend to write something about. Just because I can’t decide where to start, each of these books is given a number, and then I pick which one I should write about next by using a random number generator (or ask my wife for a random number). Curiously enough, I now have to write about back-to-back Mann(s).

This book was recommended to us by our high-school teacher as a summer read. Her expectations were a bit too high – I’m quite positive I ended up being the only kid in the class to actually read the book, and surely the only one not to simply think of Gustav as a “perverted faggot” (in my classmates’ defence, it will probably take millennia to undo what good old Catholic morals have done to little Italian towns).

I was 15, and at the start I struggled mightily with Mann’s style. I re-started the book so many times that I had come to know the first page of the book by heart. But then I got started, and fell in love. In my mind, Tadzio had the exact traits of the young actor who played him in the Visconti movie. And this is one of the few books that I would consider re-reading (there are just too many great books to read, and I have the feeling that I simply won’t have time to re-read any, save a few exceptions).

I’m one of those people who think that Venice is the most fascinating and magical place in the world. Until I read the book, however, I never liked its Lido. I still don’t, but now I’ve gone there a bunch of times just because of the book.

Mephisto – Klaus Mann

For years, I thought that Mephisto was just a critically acclaimed movie (which I owned and never watched, clearly) – then a friend gave me this as a birthday present, because it was his father’s favourite book, and the rise of Nazism and all that. In one go I found out that the movie was taken from a book, and that Thomas Mann had a son who could also write, although not as well as him.

The book is a great and fairly quick read. It is fascinating, in particular when one thinks that it was published in 1936, at a time in which the rest of Europe hadn’t yet understood the full depravity of the Nazi regime. It’s a metaphor of the entire German society in the 20’s and 30’s, but I’m not excessively fond of ground-sweeping generalizations, so I prefer to read this book as a demonstration of the fickleness of over-ambitious people, ready to compromise on all their principles (which, probably, they often don’t have in the first place).