[.ca] Stones from the River (ISBN 0613034090)

From Amazon.com:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1997: Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River clamors for comparisons to Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum; her protagonist Trudi Montag--like the unforgettable Oskar Mazerath--is a dwarf living in Germany during the two World Wars. To its credit, Stones does not wilt from the comparison. Hegi's book has a distinctive, appealing flavor of its own. Stone's characters are off-center enough to hold your attention despite the inevitable dominance of the setting: There's Trudi's mother, who slowly goes insane living in an "earth nest" beneath the family house; Trudi's best friend Georg, whose parents dress him as the girl they always wanted; and, of course, Trudi herself, whose condition dooms her to long for an impossible normalcy. Futhermore, the reader's inevitable sympathy for Trudi, the dwarf, heightens the true grotesqueness of Nazi Germany. Stones from the River is a nightmare journey with an unforgettable guide.

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Wonderful!:
I have owned this book for 6 years. I have picked up this book a dozen time- if not more- and I could never get past the first page. I forced myself to read this book and I have to admit it's one of the best books I have read.

Made me a fan!:
This book made me a fan of Ursula Heggi. What a great writer with a gift for human interest. Beginning in pre-Nazi Germany, this story ends after the war and focuses on the conception, chidlhood, adolescence, and adulthood of a female dwarf and the keeper of the pay library. She knows just about everyone in her small town, and all the drama, triumphs and tragedies in their lives are detailed along with her own. Wonderful book!

Dreadful. Let me count the ways....:
I read this book because I enjoyed some of Hegi's short stories in Hotel of the Saints. I'm wondering now if they were written by different people. Or, maybe she just had a terrible editor for this book. It's long and plodding, with way too much detail that adds nothing to the story. The narrator and heroine is a dwarf named Trudi, who grows from an unhappy, mostly friendless girl into a preachy, gossipping woman. Her endless navel-gazing makes her a less than compelling character. She occasionally has a supernatural ability to predict the future but it doesn't seem to do her any good. I gathered that the theme of this novel was 'secrets' but never understood what that was all about. It ended abruptly, as if Hegi suddenly--finally!--ran out of steam. I waded through the entire thing because of the historical information it contained. The descriptions of the lives of ordinary Germans between the wars and during the 2nd WW were good and I'll give this book an extra star for that.

A flowing saga, with nuggets of beauty:
Stones from the River deals with a heroine who is everything a heroine is not. She is a small sized person, a 'dwarf' as it were, not remarkably pretty and not truly bestowed with the milk of human kindness in all spheres like the heroines of romantic stories. Yet for me, she and the book are like a passionate love affair with life, feelings, honesty, brutality, beauty and redemption. The book traces Trudi's growth from birth, seeing her mother turn crazy, her tribulations and triumphs due to her short stature. Trudi curses, abuses, gossips, has her insecurities, trades off her secrets and yet somehow you cant help admiring the gumption of this pint sized heroine. How she and her father help their Jewish friends during the holocaust, her wanton curiosity in luring men on the basis of false information, her tumultous inner world, her forthrightedness. There are other players in the saga of Trudis stories...the unknown benefactor who blesses her town with strange gifts, the children of Trudi's youth who live out their own tableus, the lady who dresses her son as a girl, Leo, Trudi's father - truly a character to rival Atticus in To Kill a Mocking Bird. I think women will identify with the emotions that Trudi confesses to..the loss of a man, the strength of appearance, the solidariy of friends, the gain of ones esteem. Truly...a wonderful flowing river with enough beauty, like the stones in the river.

5-stars for what?!?!?!?:
If you are reading all these 5-star reviews, be aware that not everyone out there found this book "superb" or "spellbinding" or any such nonesense. I bought this book because I saw nothing but stunning reviews for it here on Amazon, which goes to show you can't always trust reviews. I thought there must be something wrong with me when, upon finally forcing myself to finish the book after about a month of starting and stopping, my only real thought was - "How can someone write a book about WWII Germany and the Holocaust where you just don't CARE if every person in the book dies?" I mean, that's rough to do! But I just kept wishing allied bombs would wipe everyone in the book out of existance so the torture could be done already! So I must be crazy, right? However, turns out I may be crazy, but I'm not alone. I've persoanlly met at least a dozenother people who felt the only thing this book was good for was (a) kindling, or (b)insensitivty-creation training, or (c) valium-replacement. So just BE SURE you want to plunk down your money for this one - maybe just buy a used copy if you're determined to avoid being too annoyed.....