Finished: November 2, 2023
Why I read this
Obviously it’s no small merit for a book to receive a Pulitzer Prize, so obviously various ones find their way to my reading list. With that, it’s always easy to pick them up at the used book store when you see that shiny gold label. That’s exactly what my mother did in giving me about 10 of them in her huge book drop this past May. However, this one was able to float to the top of the list with the synopsis and relevance to my current life. World War Two is a common subject in France and one about Saint Malo and à civilians history in France really peaked my interest.
What I learned
In the start of this book I didn’t see it as very deep. It felt very much like a nice story but I was struggling a bit to find some deeper meanings, which is unusual for an award winning novel like this. I saw the classic ideas like showing the details of the Germans side of the war like in All Quiet on the Western Front. Or the theme that a disability can be overcome and the person can even thrive with it. These of course ran heavily through the entire read and are simple, and enjoyable themes. But the extra was a bit missing for the first part.
But as the story progressed I found that all the little details and images and changes between places/people/situations, had built into very deep characters. About half way through I felt the pages turning quickly and easily, and setting it down for a break was more and more challenging. I also loved that they felt just familiar enough while staying new at the same time. Werner was the classic boy genius, but unlike most stories not everything went well for him because of this. He had real challenges, and not all of them were possible to overcome with wit, just like we see in the real world.
My favorite note of the book though was very near the end. When one of the main characters returns to Germany decades after the war it was very interesting to see their apprehensions related to the trip. I’ve never thought much about how Europe must have been in those years after the war. How could things have been normal when just 10, 20, even 30 years before there were such horrors being committed all around you by various countries. I can relate fully to the feelings of this character in being concerned about the French people hearing their German accent.
With this in mind I had the chance to visit with some of my international colleagues at a recent conference and quiz them on it. They were not quite old enough (early 50’s) to have been in exactly this period, but still old enough to have a much closer connection to the war than I could imagine. One was German, and one was from the UK. It was more than probably their grandparents fought on opposing sides of the war and yet we were happily enjoying Jambon Iberico happily together in a Spanish bistro. So I asked them about it, how could they possibly get over all of these hard feelings after multiple wars and live normal lives all together? There response was that they had managed to separate the past from the current, and they put the common interest of Europe very high on their priorities. They said to them the war hadn’t been personal, and once it was over people were people and they had to learn to move on.
I understand that it is still rather removed for them, but when I make comparisons with some of our hard topics in the US I am amazed at how quickly they took this to heart. For us the civil war was 160 years ago, but the confederate flag is still proudly displayed by our southern youth. It is unimaginable to a German that someone could display a Nazi flag. It is a similar story with racism for us. The civil rights act passed 60 years ago and yet we still have so many challenges with it in America. Why can’t America banish the past and move on like Europe? The tensions and challenges of a global war that has completely shaped the continent cannot be less painful to the society that the wrongs we have committed in America, yet for some reason ours linger.
What I didn’t like
This is a bit of a hard one for me since really I very much enjoyed the book, and despite a slightly slow start for me I don’t have any major criticisms.
Maybe the only complaint I had is that some of the classic clichés were a bit strong. Almost everything happened as expected. The German boy learning slowly that he is on the wrong side for example feels a bit played out (All Quiet on the Western Front, the Boy in the Striped Pijamas), even if there are some specifics of the plot that liven it up and make the clichés feel warm and comfortable instead of played out always. So really weak criticism, but I obviously can’t leave the section blank here!
Questions I asked
How can a country convince its people to do something that I from the outside appears so wrong? How could Hitler get so many people to kill Jews? How can Putin get so many to invade The Ukraine? How can Netanyahu keep so many in the army to attack Gaza, or how can Hamas convince so many to commit atrocities in Israel?
Are we pretentious as humans thinking we can make any real change in the universe? Is it arrogant to think that our species will ever amount to anything more than a prolonged existence that is meaningless to the eons of the universe?
What are the differences in Europe and the United States that allow such differences in overcoming prejudice?
My Favorite Quote
“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever”
“Nothing more complicated than the human brain, one wet kilogram within which spin universes”
Anthony Doerr
Books I liked like this one
A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens (for an enlightening historical fiction)
Dune: Frank Herbert (For the same reasons)
Book Reviews for Mom 