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Jump to navigationJump to searchOne Clear Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century by Roland Schimmelpfennig and Jamie Bulloch (translator) (view source)
Revision as of 13:47, 8 September 2020
, 13:47, 8 September 2020no edit summary
For one thing, there is a lot of schnapps on these pages, and it's an alcoholically-charged world we're in. But there seems to be no authorial verdict on that. You can make what you will of the influx of characters into Berlin – and in the past, the worried parents to our Romeo und Julietta have in fact gone the other way, for different reasons – but I'd rather the author stamped out what he intended me to make of it. In the end, however deft the weaving, the carpet of this plot ended with all the stray threads, with the pattern evidently incomplete, and while nothing is in danger of unravelling, it's an offcut and not a full piece of flooring.
All that said, I still feel it's worth giving this book four stars. I have to say, that may be tempered by me liking Berlin, and I've been on the autobahn where the book starts, and crossed the Oder myself – just not walking over ice. If you think back to the recent ''Dunkirk'' movie, you have three stories that have to meet, but start at different times so run past each other at their own pace, and that caused a problem for some. Here the same applies, but the number is more like seven, and I really felt it worked. Perhaps the ultimate flaw is that I liked the characters all so much I wanted more closure for them. I am also highlighting minor flaws, for want of anything like a major one. I'll certainly remember scenes from this book for a long time.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
[[The House with the Stained-Glass Window by Zanna Sloniowska and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]] is in the same series as this book – it has a slightly similar theme and feel, and is more immediately post-Soviet. Jamie Bulloch also translated [[Mesmerized by Alissa Walser and Jamie Bulloch (translator)|Mesmerized by Alissa Walser]].
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