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Family Drama / Young Adult / Coming of Age
1940s
Germany
The story of
plucky women, children and older citizens in wartime Britain is well testified
in non-fiction, fiction and film. Rationing, conscripted labour, volunteer
services such as the WVS, (Women's Voluntary Service) air raids, ‘make do and mend’ are familiar tropes.
Flip that experience and go to wartime Germany, especially one depicted from a child’s points of view. This is exactly what Annette Oppenlander does.
Lilly and Günter
belong to ordinary families, neither particularly prosperous, both deprived of
their fathers in the 1940 call-up. Lilly has the additional problem of an
unkind mother who only has time for Lilly’s brother, and a paedophile neighbour
who stalks her. Günter at least has his friend Helmut. Both children attempt
normality but bombings, food shortages, school closures and continued stress of
living under an unreasonable and unpredictable regime disrupt this. Even at the
end of war poverty and uncertainty continue into the early 1950s.
Ms Oppenlander’s
protagonists are resilient and resourceful; they have to be. The language is
direct, descriptive and atmospheric – you are with Günter and Helmut when they
are foraging for food and caught by the military – but the author never
descends to self-pitying. Described as a coming of age novel it’s also a
testament of war as seen through two children’s eyes, rather than dry political
history.
The author’s
research is ‘haarscharf’ (accurate to a T), but she had direct witnesses. Occasionally, I was jolted by the maturity of
Lilly’s observations. Sometimes she seemed a little too knowing and adult, but
it certainly didn’t impact on the story. I noted a few typos here and there and
the occasional anachronism, but nothing more than in any other novel.
I would heartily
recommend this book as an engrossing and well-researched story with two of the
most engaging protagonists I’ve read for a while.
(c) Jessica
Brown
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