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This is a soft pick. It is incredibly well written, in parts it was over my head with cultural & historical references, sometimes fascinatingly so & sometimes it began to feel too much & meaningless. It did some truly interesting things with form in the second half of the book - with repetition & alternating pov between paragraphs - giving you real time variances between the two protagonists. But the relationship! I felt so disturbed ⬇️

A love affair that goes sour against the backdrop of the tumult of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The landscape of their relationship is mirrored in the political landscape of the time - tense, contentious, fragile, and fractured. Definitely a unique read and was wholly engaging. The writing style is engrossing.

This is basically a love story set against the end of a divided Germany. I think it was well written. But tbh it took me forever to get into this and it might be my only Erpenbeck for the time being.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

I found this book hauntingly real. It brought back so many memories of that febrile time in the 80s. When the East Germans came to the west en masse and then the wall fell. What‘s depicted here is the complicated and toxic relationship that came before and after reunification. Anna Funder writes about what was lost in Stasiland. The question to me is ‘we‘ve ended the Cold War, is life better now‘ I highly recommend this book.

Almost every sentence in this book seemed like it carried a double meaning that I didn't catch because I don't know enough about East German history/politics. And without that subtext it just becomes an increasingly weird romance between a student and a married man 39y older that goes: insta-love - unhealthy codependency - completely toxic and abusive. I enjoyed the glimpses into culture and daily life, but the main story just had me bewildered.

#CoverLove Day 15: #Orange paired with caramel banana crepe with vanilla ice cream. Luscious.

#CoverLove Day 14: Kairos by the light of a #Lamp along with dessert that consists of churros with banana and almonds and chocolate sauce dipped in affogato. Dessert while in Bandung, Indonesia last week.

A lot of people rave about this book, but I've also heard some things that make me hesitant. About to find out for myself.

#InternationalBooker

#CoverLove Day 6: #Yellow to somekinda-orange in Kairos - taken with a photo of my mocktail here in Bandung with some kind of lychee. 💕

I wanted to like this, it has incredible reviews BUT I should have gone with my gut. An East German 58 year old man has an affair with 19 year old woman. This just isn‘t my thing!

A younger woman and an older man have a love affair that turns dark amid the dying days of East Germany.

I‘m enjoying this very much, I suppose East Berlin and the 80s are cat nip for me

My 3rd from the International #Booker2024 longlist, now on the shortlist. 1980‘s East Berlin. A young woman, 19, falls for a married man, age 53. It starts out somehow romantic before getting darker. What‘s interesting, and what i thought about while listening, was how this relationship reflects the state of the dying GDR. It‘s, if you like, a romantic look at a lost, stifled but stable East Berlin. It makes for interesting read.

Just downloaded this morning. It may the only international booker longlist book i will read on audio. It‘s also the first from the list that I‘ve started. #booker2024

On the Booker long list!
Here‘s the link https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2024

I almost couldn‘t finish this book, I detested Hans so much, Katharine‘s much older lover. At first their relationship seems okay but it turns more toxic by the year, keeping pace with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. With it, the world opens up to Katharina, who lives in East Berlin, now she just needs to feel she belongs and deserves what the world is offering.

A story of a troubling relationship between a young girl and older man with lasting impacts. I think Erpenbeck is a brilliant writer and loved the structure of this book as told through a series of boxes of documents. Also the parallels between their relationship and the context of East/West Berlin and the Soviet Union when the story takes place are very powerful. Unsettling and moving.

I didn‘t like this book much from the start, as I recoiled from the central 19 yo girl with 53 yo man relationship. Ick. I will say that the setting of 1986 East Germany moving forward through the fall of the Berlin Wall was fascinating and for me saved this from being a pan.

A complex + deep analysis of a relationship btwn a 19 yr old girl + a married man in his 50s which v quickly turns disturbing in the manipulative nature of the control Hans exerts over Katharina. The setting is late 1980s Berlin so the paranoia + brutality echoes the last days of the GDR regime. I felt uncomfortable watching the way K is damaged by an older male but relieved towards the end. A dark troubling read but interesting nevertheless. ⬇️

The tunnels lie hundred fathoms deep under the ground, and it takes several minutes to get from daylight via long escalators to the platforms; then there is pushing and jostling to get in and out, but once in the carriages, people are sitting and standing perfectly calmly in the crush, some of them reading books. Simple people, laborers, office workers, reading. And good books too, not some crap.

(Guardian article from 2014)

... if ever she forgot her keys, then she would while away the time before her mother's return by counting the double-decker buses from the thirteenth- floor corridor window as the buses passed back and forth in front of the Springer publications building, which was something like the citadel of the class enemy.

Did the West as a whole smell like the parcels from her grandmother and aunt: of detergent, gummi bears, and coffee?

The library plastic foiling my photography attempts yet again... 😬😂

He knows all the anecdotes, everyone involved at some time with everyone else, first they were all young, then they had babies together, married, separated, fell in love, became enemies, friends, plotted or practiced withdrawal. Always the same people, at parties, in bars, at openings and premieres. In a small country with no easy exit, everything felt inevitably inbred.

East Berlin late 80s on a rainy day, 19 yr old Katharina meets Hans on the bus. Their eyes lock and everything change. Hans is 34 yrs older, married with one kid.

We see their relationship change over the next yrs, also after the fall of the wall.

This was a very interesting study of a relationship and if anyone has read it, I would love to discuss the second part.

#WeeklyForecast

Finish Northanger Abbey and start Villette with #PemberLittens

I‘ve just started reading the introduction to The Christmas Chronicles, it might seem early for this but Slater starts on 1st November.

Another book I‘ve just started is Kairos and I want to finish that. Read Monstress vol 6. Hopefully start The Garden of the Gods.