WW II in an unfamiliar light, in effect three stories about ordinary Germans: Helmut, a young, patriotic photographer in the thirties; Lore, a twelve-year-old girl who guides her siblings across a devastated Germany after the Allies imprison her Nazi parents; and in the nineties, Misha, obsessed by what his beloved grandmother knew and what his grandfather might have done during the war. The use of the present tense gives a heart-stopping immediacy to the narrative.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 35 July 2006 ) |
