Hagena, Katharina "The Taste of Apple Seeds"

Hagena, Katharina "The Taste of Apple Seeds" (German: Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen) - 2008

A beautiful story about three generations of women. A quiet read that you can enjoy slowly. The story is told by the granddaughter who inherits her grandmother's house after her death. She used to spend her summer holidays here and reminisces about her beautiful days as a child but also about the problems in the family and the tragedies they encountered.

A really beautiful story about families, women and memories.

From the Back Cover:

"For Iris, childhood memories are of long hot summers spent playing with her cousin Rosmarie in her grandmother's garden, a place where redcurrants turned to pale tears on the branches of trees and beautiful Aunt Inga shook sparks from the tips of her fingers. But now her grandmother is dead and, along with inheriting the property, Iris finds that she also inherits her family's darkest secrets. Reluctant to keep it, but reluctant to sell, Iris spends one more summer at the house. By day she swims at the local lake, where she rediscovers a childhood companion. Alone at night she roams through the familiar rooms, exploring the tall black shadows of the past. In the flicker between remembrance and forgetting, Iris recalls an enigmatic grandfather who went to war and came back a different man, the night her cousin Rosmarie fell through the conservatory roof and shattered her family's lives, and a moment of love that made all the trees in the orchard bloom over night."

I read this book in the original German version.