Book Review: Stones from the River

Stones from the River, a novel by Ursula Hegi

I just finished reading this book, and people, let me go ahead and recommend it for a beautiful winter read. The book follows the life of a woman, Trudi Montag from her birth in 1915 through the second World War to 1952. The setting is Burgdorf, Germany, a town through which the Rhein river flows. The story chronicles the life events of Trudi, a dwarf woman, and her journey to find herself at home in a body that is taboo, a time that is full of war and suffering, and a town that has a deeply rooted tradition of hiding its secrets. The story successfully weaves the lives of the people in Trudi's community, giving us readers access to the layers of stories and secrets that the townspeople bring to Trudi, who has an unspoken role as the town story keeper. We learn not only of the dark secrets of the town- affairs, obsessions, violence, incest, bigotry and betrayal, but of the subtle undercurrents of love and kinship in the town- the workings of the unknown benefactor, love and loyalty between neighbors, secret underground hiding places created by townspeople to hide and protect Jews from the Gestapo, private redemptions of individuals in an impossibly conflicted time period.

What I love about this book is that it is thick and complex. There are many characters, and throughout the book we learn the humanity of each one- the inner struggles, the play of the light and the dark, the complexity of each life story. The book spans a fairly long time period, and Ursula Hegi takes her time weaving the stories of the townspeople together through Trudi's life and work in her family's pay library. She navigates us through the painful years of World War II, slowly guiding us into the darkness and terror which was the Nazi regime and the genocide of the Jewish Germans. And then she holds us there in the darkness with Trudi and her father, other neighbors who hide the Jews, and the friends who are hiding. And while we get a good long painful glimpse of the dark side of humanity, she never abandons us there without something beautiful to be aware of. And when the war is over, she reveals to us the deep wounds and scars that are left on the town, the community, and the individuals whom we have gotten to know quite intimately. We are also allowed to see the resilience of the human spirit, but not without the signs of brokeness. She addresses a topic most people wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, and she does it boldly, justly, sadly and beautifully.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the continuous presence of the river in all of the stories within stories. I realized when I finished the book that the river was a main character, and it was the crucial character that tied together so many of the stories, the witness and the active participant of the town's collective story through time and space. And Ursula's storytelling is very waterlike- fluid and constant, with emotion swelling and flooding like the river, then retreating and finding stillness like an eddie beneath a large rock. She makes us realize that our lives can be understood better in the context of our environment. I like the fact that the river ties it all together.

If you are looking for something deep and meaningful for the dark time of the year, read Stones from the River. Then call me because it would be nice to talk about it.