Garmus, Bonnie "Lessons in Chemistry"

Garmus, Bonnie "Lessons in Chemistry" - 2022

A member of my German book club had suggested this book  but despite everyone agreeing to it at first, it wasn't chosen in the end. But I had already ordered the book, so I wanted to read it.

It certainly would have been a good choice to discuss. I doubt I would have chosen it, had I only seen the cover. On the other hand, I suppose those people who are looking for a romantic chick lit, might be disappointed.

It's hard to describe this book. I would probably declare it as chick-lit though it has some deeper meanings. However, I did like the protagonist a lot, I wish I would have had an Elizabeth Zott in my life when growing up. Even though I am certainly about a decade younger than her, all those obstacles that were placed in the way of women were still around. And there was nobody, absolutely nobody who supported me in my education, not my parents and definitely not my teachers (except for the one in elementary school but he wasn't there anymore later). On the contrary, all I heard was "you will get married and don't need a job". And my boss got a guy in from outside instead of promoting me. For the same reason.

Same as Elizabeth, I had the feeling my whole life that I worked for men less intelligent than me.

The books is described as humorous and there are certain aspects of humour in it, but overal, the sadness is more important and stays more in our memories.

Maybe this story speaks more to a younger audience, it just brought too many bad memories for me. (Although that speaks in favour of the book.) I wouldn't say I disliked the book completly, but it brought me back to a time I'd rather forget. I would have loved to discuss it with my book club and hear what the other women have to say about it.

And last, but not least, some things have changed but not enough. What do you think???

From the back cover:

"Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.

But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fuelled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation. Soon, a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time."

"Lessons in Chemistry" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2022 by the German Indepent Book Shops.

Wells, Benedict "The End of Loneliness"

Wells, Benedict "The End of Loneliness" (German: Vom Ende der Einsamkeit) - 2016

A quiet book about a family that suddenly isn't a family anymore. How do children cope with the death of their parents, how do they get on?

In this story we can see what happens next. Or not. How this loss accompanies a child throughout their entire life, how it shapes their life.

After the death of their parents, the children grow up in a boarding school, which is also described very impressively. Here the author probably drew on his own experiences, as he too was at boarding school at the age of six.

This is a fabulous book that captures all facets of an entire life (or several). Wonderfully written, a fascinating family story that is so comprehensive despite only being just over 350 pages long. Terrific. 

I think I will read more from this young author.

From the back cover:

"Jules Moreau’s childhood is shattered after the sudden death of his parents. Enrolled in boarding school where he and his siblings, Marty and Liz, are forced to live apart, the once vivacious and fearless Jules retreats inward, preferring to live within his memories - until he meets Alva, a kindred soul caught in her own grief. Fifteen years pass and the siblings remain strangers to one another, bound by tragedy and struggling to recover the family they once were. Jules, still adrift, is anchored only by his desires to be a writer and to reunite with Alva, who turned her back on their friendship on the precipice of it becoming more, but just as it seems they can make amends for time wasted, invisible forces - whether fate or chance - intervene.

A kaleidoscopic family saga told through the fractured lives of the three Moreau siblings alongside a faltering, recovering love story, The End of Loneliness is a stunning meditation on the power of our memories, of what can be lost and what can never be let go. With inimitable compassion and luminous, affecting prose, Benedict Wells contends with what it means to find a way through life, while never giving up hope you will find someone to go with you."

"The End of Loneliness" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2016 by the German Indepent Book Shops and received the European Union Prize for Literature.

Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here"

Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here" (German: Was man von hier aus sehen kann) - 2017

In 2017, this novel was awarded The Favourite Book of the Independents and that is the only reason I was made aware of it. I liked the first one I read from that list and every other one that I read subsequently. Because the one that received the prize last year still isn't available in paperback, I went to one of the older ones, this one.

And I am glad I did. This was such a lovely book, a story of a small village where everyone sticks together, no matter how hard it is sometimes, where everyone looks after everybody else, whether they like them or not. A great description of a functioning small community. The novel has been described as "warm". Yes, it is that but it is so much more. It's a love story as well as a philosophical quest, a coming of age story as well one about old age.

This book is described as "magic realism" and I have tagged it accordingly, though it really is more a touch of superstition in my eyes.

It is hard to describe the book without giving too much away, only this, there is a lot to be said about loss and how to deal with it and this book does it beautifully.

Mariana Leky is certainly an author to be watching out for, I will read more of her novels, so far she has written nine. Where do I begin?

From the back cover:

"In this international bestseller by the award-winning novelist Mariana Leky, What You Can See from Here, a heartwarming story unfolds about a small town, a grandmother whose dreams foretell a coming death, and the young woman forever changed by these losses and her loving, endearingly oddball community

On a beautiful spring day, a small village wakes up to an omen: Selma has dreamed of an okapi. Someone is about to die.

Luisa, Selma’s ten-year-old granddaughter, looks on as the predictable characters of her small world begin acting strangely. Though they claim not to be superstitious, each of her neighbors newly grapples with buried secrets and deferred decisions that have become urgent in the face of death.

Luisa’s mother struggles to decide whether to end her marriage. An old family friend, known only as the optician, tries to find the courage to tell Selma he loves her. Only sad Marlies remains unchanged, still moping around her house and cooking terrible food. But when the prophesied death finally comes, the circumstances fall outside anyone’s expectations. The loss forever changes Luisa and shapes her for years to come, as she encounters life’s great questions alongside her devoted friends, young and old.

A story about the absurdity of life and death, a bittersweet portrait of small towns and the wider world that beckons beyond, this charmer of a novel is also a thoughtful meditation on the way loss and love shape not just a person but a community. Mariana Leky’s What You Can See from Here is a moving tale of grief, first love, reluctant love, late love, and finding one’s place in the world, even if that place is right where you started."

Myers, Benjamin "The Offing"

Myers, Benjamin "The Offing" - 2019

The latest "Favourite Book of the Independents" was announced and it was "The Offing". I had seen it in a bookshop and thought it sounded interesting but because my TBR pile keeps growing and growing, I hadn't bought it. This is the one time where I am glad that I can't borrow English books in my new home town because now I own it. It's definitely a keeper.

I'm glad this received the prize because so far, "Where the Crawdads Sing" (which had received last year's prize), had been my favourite book of the year. I think it has been replaced with this one.

Robert is only sixteen years old. He is to follow his dad as a coal miner, like every other young boy in his village in Durham in the Northern part of England. World War II has just ended and Robert wants to see a little from the world. Post-war England isn't exactly a dream but him being strong and many men missing, he finds jobs here and there and then carries on into the next village.

Until he hits the sea in Yorkshire and Dulcie's cottage. Dulcie is older, a lot older than Robert, lives alone but has had an interesting life. She shares her experience with the young foundling, gets him interested in literature and shows him that there is a lot more out there in life than what his village back home has to offer.

This is a brilliant book about so many things, England and Europe, the ocean, literature, poetry, the simple life, nature. He writes it as a sort of memoir from when he himself is old.

It already starts with a great quote: "For no one really wins a war: some just lose a little less than others." I don't understand how people don't get it.

To just show you his brilliant use of language, here's one of his nature descriptions.
"The land flowed forward now in a grassy tessellation of fields farmed and grazed, and divided by dusty tracks and densely packed tree-covered glades."

This book is just beautifully written. A fantastic example of great literature.

The author is from Durham himself. He has received many prestigious prizes already. I'll have to read more of his books.

From the back cover:

"'After all, there are only a few things truly worth fighting for: freedom, of course, and all that it brings with it. Poetry, perhaps, and a good glass of wine. A nice meal. Nature. Love, if you're lucky.'

One summer following the Second World War, Robert Appleyard sets out on foot from his Durham village. Sixteen and the son of a coal miner, he makes his way across the northern countryside until he reaches the former smuggling village of Robin Hood’s Bay. There he meets Dulcie, an eccentric, worldly, older woman who lives in a ramshackle cottage facing out to sea. - and she introduces him to the pleasures of rich food, sea-swimming, sunburn and poetry. The two come from different worlds, yet as the summer months pass, they form an unlikely friendship that will profoundly alter their lives.

From the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole comes a powerful new novel about an unlikely friendship between a young man and an older woman, set in the former smuggling village of Robin Hood’s Bay in the aftermath of the Second World War."


"The Offing" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2020 by the German Indepent Bookshops.

Favourite (German) Independent Books

Das Lieblingsbuch der Unabhängigen = The Favourite Book of the Independents

While waiting for the announcement of the next Nobel Prize winner, I have another prize that is presented yearly.

There are book club chains and then there are the independent bookshops. In Germany, the independent ones are working together and pronounce their favourite book every year. They have done this sincd 2015. Some of their books are German, others are written in another language (but most of them have been translated into English). I have read only a few of those but will try to get the others and then report back.

[If they have not been translated into English, I have added a translation in brackets but they will probably give it another title once they publish an English edition.]

    2015 Dörte Hansen: "Altes Land" (This House is Mine)
    2016 Benedict Wells: "Vom Ende der Einsamkeit" (The End of Loneliness)
    2017 Mariana Leky: "Was man von hier aus sehen kann" (What You Can See from Here)
    2018 Francesca Melandri: "Alle, außer mir" (Sangue giusto) (Italian) [Right Blood or Everyone but me] 
    2019 Delia Owens: "Where the Crawdads Sing" (English)
    2020 Benjamin Myers "The Offing" (English) 
    2021 Ewald Arenz "Der große Sommer" [The Big Summer]
    2022 Bonnie Garmus "Lessons in Chemistry" (English)
    2023 Caroline Wahl "22 Bahnen" [22 Lanes]
    2024 Alina Bronsky "Pi mal Daumen" Goodreads 
    2025 Nelio Biedermann "Lázár" Goodreads 

You can always find the latest shortlist including all the recipients of the prize here.

Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing"

Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing" - 2018

This book has been recommended to me by so many friends and even though my TBR pile is growing constantly, I just had to pick it up when I came across it in a local bookshop. The choice of English books there isn't always great, so this already says a lot. I'm usually very sceptical about books that everyone praises because I don't often like them but this was different.

I think reviewing this book is one of the toughest I ever had to do. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but it's not easy to write about it after you read it all. I should have written my review before reading the last chapter.

Anyway, a great story about Kya, a girl that is left all alone by her family, one after the other leaves and she has to fend for herself at the age of nine. The villagers don't look favourable at her, to say it mildly.

In a way, there are two stories, one when Kya is a child and one when she is 19 and a murder has happened. Needless to say, it doesn't take long until she is the main suspect. The two stories are told alternately until they eventually merge together. I love that way of storytelling.

We get to know Kya not only as a very resourceful person, very down to earth, but also as a wonderful artist who gets her rightful acknowledgement in the end

I will now go on talking about the rest of the book in the spoiler section. If you have not read the book, don't open it.

Spoiler:

In case you disregarded this. Didn't I say? Don't open it if you haven't read it!!!! Don't blame me if I spoiled the book for you.

Like everyone else, I've been wondering all the time how and why Chase died. Was it an accident? Was it someone else? Was it Kya after all? If you read the book, you know how it ends. Was I surprised? Not really. But it still came as a huge shock. I don't think I could ever commit a murder but sometimes I come close to understanding the killer. This is one of those cases. What I did not understand was why Tate destroyed all the poems. That's definitely something I could not have done. And it is a pity that this was simply left out in the film. I did think it was important.

* * *

If you look for a page-turner, an unputdownable book, I can heartily recommend this one. I hope Delia Owens will write more books. Maybe I'll try one of her memoirs, "Cry of the Kalahari", "The Eye of the Elephant", or "Secrets of the Savanna".

From the back cover:

"How long can you protect your heart? 

For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps."

"Where the Crawdads Sing" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2019 by the German Indepent Bookshops.

Hansen, Dörte "This House is Mine"

Hansen, Dörte "This House is Mine" (German: Altes Land) - 2015

I don't think I would have ever found this book if it hadn't been suggested as a book club read by an American book club member. I had seen it but thought it looked more like a chick lit book and I had plenty of books on my TBR pile already.

Anyway, I read it and loved it. A great description of some women who try to find their way in this world, starting with the mother who has to flee East Prussia after WWII, the daughter who will always be the foreigner in the new part of Germany they start to live in, a granddaughter who tries to find her roots. A lot of women's problems are mentioned in the novel but also the change of the countryside, the German word "Landflucht" (fleeing from the countryside) probably describes it best, the children of farmers who have cultivated their land for generations leave their home and settle in the towns, they don't want to be farmers anymore. Those who stay behind have to fight a lot of battles, those against nature and its harshness but also against laws and newcomers who would love to have everything done a different way, a new way, until they find that sometimes that is just not possible.

I come from an area not too far from the "Altes Land" (the German title, translated: Old Country although that wasn't the original meaning, situated to the southwest of Hamburg) and I grew up speaking the low German in which the old people in the novel talk. Therefore, reading this book, was a little bit like home to me. The English title comes from the inscription on the gable of the old house:
"Dit Huus is mien un doch nich mien, de no mi kummt, nennt't ook noch sien." (This hoose is mine ain and yet no mine ain, he that follows will caw it his.  = This house is mine and yet not mine, whoever follows still calls it his.)
The author is a journalist and this is her first book. I do hope that more will follow because I intend to read them all.

I read this in the original German language.

We discussed this in our international book club in March 2017.

From the back cover:

"A bestselling German novel about two women connected by their experiences in and around a special old house.

Told in skillfully-crafted alternating points of view and a non-linear storyline, Hansen's bestselling debut novel showcases her impressive talent for characterization and dialog in an unusual book that combines emotional depth and humor. She immerses the reader in a series of brightly lit or obscure scenes that call for close reading and offer many rewards. The author's sparse language and sometimes oblique references make for a deeply immersive reading experience, and the characters will resonate long after the last page has been turned. Readers of Anthony Doerr and M.L. Stedman will find much to love here.

All her life Vera has felt like a stranger in the old and drafty farmhouse she arrived in as a five-year-old refugee from East Prussia in 1945, and yet she can’t seem to let it go. 60 years later, her niece Anne suddenly shows up at her door with her small son– Anne has fled the trendy Hamburg neighborhood she never fit into when her relationship implodes. Vera and Anne are strangers to each other, but have much more in common than they think. As the two strong-willed and very different women share the great old house, they surprisingly find what they have never searched for: a family."

 

"This House is Mine" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2015 by the German Indepent Book Shops.