How German Is It? (edit title)

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  • Rated 3 stars

  “I finally finished How German Is It? and admit that I found it challenging, and maybe not very enjoyable.
  
  The story involves a writer whose father was executed for being involved with a failed assassination attempt against Hitler, whose estranged wife is involved with a terrorist group. His brother is a successful architect whose buildings keep getting blown up by the terrorist group. The town he returns to is a modern German town built on the site of a former concentration camp, and is named after a modern German philosopher. The theme is an exploration of Germany's identity after the Holocaust - how much of its past can it embrace?
  
  It lacked a pleasant flow of the story. The biggest distraction for me way the way the author continually inserted questions into the prose - example:
  
  Why am I here? Now? And what do I plan to do? Tomorrow? The day after? And the day after?
  
  In one section every couple of paragraphs were punctuated with the questions, How different could it be? and Could Everything be different? over and over. It was very frustrating because all those questions slow or stop me, as the reader, and became vexing. Even the title of the book is a question as are the first and last lines.
  
  It is as if Abish decided, "To Hell with 'Show, don't tell,' I'm going to ASK!"
  
  In my initial review, written when I had started the novel, I wrote that the book read more like a bunch of essays than a novel; but after completing it I realize that it reads like a story told in the form of a college lecture given by a slightly condescending lecturer.
  
  The story, the characters, and the books as a whole were good; but the narrative style made this 250 page novel read like a much longer work. The ending of the book seems to tie everything together and more or less redeems the book.
  
  Seriously, though, I think that I will need to read a compelling, bestseller, mindless, page-turner when I get done with How German Is It? to purge my brain and cleanse my palate.”

  moik wrote this review Tuesday, December 23 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No