Changes

It's a fascinating and absorbing book. Weiner notes in her introduction that history is usually told from the point of view of the powerful, or looking at things from the level of an entire country or region. We hear much less often about the individual lives shaped by these great forces. And yet sometimes, these individual stories do more to illustrate the larger forces at work than any analysis of parliaments and elections and arms races. And, in seeking to make sense of a family partly defined by a father who was not often present but who always formed a large presence in his daughter's life, Weiner has given us a story of three lives which can tell us a great deal.

The writing is clear and elegant and is flavoured both by Weiner's honesty - for example, her jealousy on standing by her father's grave and seeing it was next to the grave of the wife who wasn't her mother - and her compassionate understanding of the flaws and frailties and courage of her family members. I read it in one sitting, fascinated by the careful research and the living of three lives that were so complicated and difficult yet so recognisable in the daily effort of putting one foot in front of the other, despite all the obstacles.