Rating: 
Summary: A Companion to Stones from the River
Review: The question here is which book to you read first the prequel - "Stones from the River" or "Floating in My Mother's Palm"? I read SFTR first and found this a little less in depth, while at the same time continuing on the lives of the characters introduced one generation earlier as viewed from the post WWII generation. This book answers several questions I had regarding the seemingly meandering ending for SFTR, and now helps it all make sense. I suppose if I had read this, I would have given "Stones" 5 stars instead of 4 stars. Some of the stories are ordinary while others are extremely touching. All loosely connect to each other. Any way you do it, don't read one of these two books without reading the other.
Rating:
Summary: A Companion to Stones from the River
Review: The question here is which book to you read first the prequel - "Stones from the River" or "Floating in My Mother's Palm"? I read SFTR first and found this a little less in depth, while at the same time continuing on the lives of the characters introduced one generation earlier as viewed from the post WWII generation. This book answers several questions I had regarding the seemingly meandering ending for SFTR, and now helps it all make sense. I suppose if I had read this, I would have given "Stones" 5 stars instead of 4 stars. Some of the stories are ordinary while others are extremely touching. All loosely connect to each other. Any way you do it, don't read one of these two books without reading the other.
Rating: 
Summary: An Absolute Treat
Review: There are few better artists than Hegi when it comes to evoking a sense of longing and hope as she delves deeply into the created characters. I was transported into the lives of these memorable individuals and will forever have a difficult time in leaving them behind. Bravo! I will read any Hegi material I can get my hands on!
Rating:
Summary: Well Written, Well Told
Review: There are two things that must come together to form an excellent novel - a good story and the ability to find the words to tell it. Hegi is a master storyteller and gifted in her use of language to convey strong characters in memorable settings. Floating in My Mother's Palm is a first person account of the childhood of its main character, Hanna. As Hanna recounts aspects of her life that shaped her character and perspective, she introduces you to other characters in the town of Burgdorf and provides a view into their lives that make the town and its people real in every aspect. Each character is reminiscent of someone I've known from my own life. Its remarkable how the lives of characters from a small town in Germany can be so similar to those in Anytown, USA. The situations may be different but the issues are the same. Many of the characters in the novel appear in other work by Hegi, making the body of her work an intimate experience, leaving the reader feeling like they are getting closer and closer to each character with each novel read. Hegi's writing has never disappointed me.
Rating:
Summary: Well Written, Well Told
Review: There are two things that must come together to form an excellent novel - a good story and the ability to find the words to tell it. Hegi is a master storyteller and gifted in her use of language to convey strong characters in memorable settings. Floating in My Mother's Palm is a first person account of the childhood of its main character, Hanna. As Hanna recounts aspects of her life that shaped her character and perspective, she introduces you to other characters in the town of Burgdorf and provides a view into their lives that make the town and its people real in every aspect. Each character is reminiscent of someone I've known from my own life. Its remarkable how the lives of characters from a small town in Germany can be so similar to those in Anytown, USA. The situations may be different but the issues are the same. Many of the characters in the novel appear in other work by Hegi, making the body of her work an intimate experience, leaving the reader feeling like they are getting closer and closer to each character with each novel read. Hegi's writing has never disappointed me.
Rating:
Summary: Better than "Stones from the River"
Review: These stories were really wonderful vignettes of characters developed in "Stones From the River" (though the latter book was published later, I believe). I selected this book after reading "Stones" and "Salt Dancers", and liked this one the best of all. Hegi's writing is tight, sparse, and clean in this "novel" and Hanna, the teller of the tales, (and the baby to whom Trudi from "Stones" was so attached), is a fine observer of the both the strengths and weaknesses of her fellow townspeople - yet she is sympathetic in her recounting of some personal and pivotal time in each person's life. I've wondered whether my enjoyment of this book stems from having met some of these characters from "Stones" - but I actually enjoyed this book more. "Stones" provided the broad narrative for several decades of history in their little German town while "Floating in my Mother's Palm" sheds light on the more personal stories of these characters. Strongly recommend this book
Rating:
Summary: splendid, moving story
Review: This book has left an indelible impression. Everything Ursula Hegi has written has been enjoyable, moving, and thought-provoking, but this little book overwhelmed me. Images from the book have stayed with me over the years; some sad and some uplifting. A remarkable book.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant stories--fragments that (nearly) coalese to a novel
Review: This book, written before "Stones from the River" is almost a collection of stories that, taken together, form a novel about a townspeople's postwar lives in Nazi Germany. The glue that binds the pieces is their presentation from one girl's point of view. And it works--this thin book is rich in understanding of what emotions, fears, and desires drive actions in individual lives. Each chapter ends with vivid imagery, poetic, is metaphoric; each is a story in itself. It's different than Stones from the River, but there is no need to make comparisions--each is wonderful in its own right.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Articulation, Contemporary Literature
Review: Ursula Hegi uses her usual hypnotic prose in this book, which flows like the water in the rivers that she loves, even as fast as 8 kilometers per hour like the Rhein. The stories continue to flow seamlessly, through her whole book. Yes, "stories," as even though the book is a novel, it is composed of chapters, which are in fact free standing stories in and of themselves. All the stories are narrated by her protagonist, but each story could be lifted out of the book, and be self-contained.
Her subject of each story is unique, and yet it is all mixed with her wondrous elucidation of the struggles, feelings and progression of the German people in `reconstruction' after the World War II. The people left, in so many country towns of Germany, in the aftermath of the war. These people were only trying to live; before, during and after the war. They were not part of the political maelstrom we call National Socialism. Their lives were very much more simple than that, and they did suffer quite terribly, yet they stoically went on, as people have proved in every corner of the globe, that this is what human beings do. They pick up what is left and go on.
Hegi does not concentrate on the effects of the war, they are coincident with the life that is found in post-World War II Germany. Hegi concentrates upon the life of her protagonist, a very smart and very sensitive young lady, from age 7 through about 14, as she grows up in this environment. The problems that she encounters though are the normal problems that all people encounter in every environment. Only the backdrop has to do with where they are and what the landscape is like. Hegi pays attention to that, but not overly, it is the people that are her subject: from Love to Death, from teenage pregnancy to sexual child abuse, from amputation to neural disease, these are the things that Hegi speaks about, and how they affect her narrator as she grows up in the midst of it. As she grows up in life, perhaps wherever she might be.
Hegi writes modern day literature. It is worthy of the classification, and will endure the test of time. All readers who enjoy wonderfully written contemporary literature should not miss the opportunity to indulge themselves in Hegi's book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent companion to Stones From the River
Review: While I agree that it's not QUITE as good as Stones From the River it certainly is far better than most books out there. The characters are well written and like SFTR I was immediately drawn into the German setting. Well Done.
|
