Helpful Score: 2
This is a delicately put together book of several strands linked together of many women in a small Austrian village who do their best to survive. A book that has an old-fashioned quality that I deeply admire.
Helpful Score: 2
Rather than 12 separate short stories, this is more like one story of life and events in a small mountain village during WW II, told from the point of view of 12 women who live there. The characters are well drawn and varied in personality so you really feel each story is told by someone new, with the transition smooth enough that it doesn't feel choppy. The writing is descriptive without being wordy, and it is easy to picture the characters and picturesque setting in your mind as events unfold. Very highly recommended; this is the best book I read in all of 2011.
Helpful Score: 1
Enjoyable book; 12 short stories woven together...
The story of a family and their small Alpine Village called Rosenau that was totally changed by war.
An excellent read - I wish it had been longer!
A great glimpse into the lives of women living in Austria during the early to late 1900's. Although I did enjoy the book - it was a fast, easy read that held my attention, I was left wanting more. It felt as though just as you were being drawn in to the woman's story it ended. I kept having to flip back to the clan charts in order to keep straight who was related to who, etc. Overall an enjoyable book.
Loved this small book. It reminded me of the stories about my German ancestors.
Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
The book contains 12 linked stories,spanning 1907 - 1977.
In the tiny Alpine village called Rosenau, each life has its place, and every variation ripples the surface. Be it a mysteriously misaddressed love letter or a girl's careless delivery of two helpless relatives into Nazi hands, the town's balance is ever tested, and never certain. Here is a novel spanning eighty years- years that bring factories and wars, store-bought cheese and city-trained teachers-weaving the fates of the wives, mothers, and daughters in this remote corner of Austria. To quote Rosellen Brown: " The women in this haunting book are deeply and uniquely of their place, yet they speak (often wordlessly) of women's longings and satisfactions everywhere."
The book contains 12 linked stories,spanning 1907 - 1977.
In the tiny Alpine village called Rosenau, each life has its place, and every variation ripples the surface. Be it a mysteriously misaddressed love letter or a girl's careless delivery of two helpless relatives into Nazi hands, the town's balance is ever tested, and never certain. Here is a novel spanning eighty years- years that bring factories and wars, store-bought cheese and city-trained teachers-weaving the fates of the wives, mothers, and daughters in this remote corner of Austria. To quote Rosellen Brown: " The women in this haunting book are deeply and uniquely of their place, yet they speak (often wordlessly) of women's longings and satisfactions everywhere."
