This book is near and dear to me, as it was the one that convinced me to write the book I had always wanted to write. Beyond that, this is a beautifully written book that makes me cry, every damn time.

great book...interesting main charater

This is a very dense book, with many characters and spanning many years. I had a hard time reading it because it is set in Germany between 1915 and 1952. There is a strong emotional impact, enough that I had to put the book down at one point and read something light-hearted before I could come back to it.
The story starts in 1915 when Trudi, a dwarf, is born to Mr. and Mrs. Montag. Mrs. Montag is mentally unbalanced but her husband is very patient and loving, both with his wife who dies when Trudi is 3, and with his daughter. The community is brought to life for us through the eyes of Trudi as she struggles to grow, to fit in, to be like others. But we see as she gets older that she is a questioning child and not weak willed. She has a knack for seeing into people and teasing out their secrets. Her father runs the lending library in town and sells tobacco as well, they have a lot of contact with nearly everyone in town.
As I read all this pre-war story I had such a strong sense of terror. The birds were singing, the children were playing, people were going about their daily lives; but from the vantage point of history I knew bloody murder on a grand scale was about to happen. I found myself twisted up with fear and dread, and this is the point where I had to take a break from the book.
When I went back to it I was determined to stick it out. I already knew what happened in WWII in Germany, I am at a distance of a number of years, I would read at a remove. I would accept the pain and keep slogging through. It is kind of a long book, I stayed up two entire nights in my determination to finish it.
The author was good at creating some sympathy for the citizens caught up in the war, those who tried to resist and were shunned, imprisoned, killed. Those who believed the regime was good for the country, those who came home from the war, destroyed by what they had seen, what they had done. How allegiances were demanded, and remanded. Many of people were extremely frightened and just tried to keep their heads down and do what they were told. Some people were brave and hid their Jewish neighbors, some people informed, others kept secrets. I think one of the saddest aspects of this book was seeing the destruction of the boys we watched grow up in the earlier part of the book, whether they actually died in battle or came home physically or mentally or emotionally damaged.
We can see how the early religious education was polarizing, the instruction in obedience, the emotional appeal to patriotism, the turning of family members against each other by the Hitler Youth movement, and the turning of neighbor against neighbor through fear. It is really frightening to see how many, many lives were lost because of this one man's success in building his empire. It took the weight of the world to topple it and try to save everyone who had survived from the madness. Why does this happen, why do we love to have causes, follow leaders, join groups, make armies? Trudi is not a quiet character during this section of the book; she becomes a young woman, in love; she hides Jews in her basement as one of the safe bases to smuggle people out of the country.
The end of the book follows the community through the aftermath of the war, a difficult time as well.
I did not actually understand the last few pages, but was so tired of reading the book that I did not make a serious effort to really nail it down. It is a very exhausting book to read.
I'll end this review with a quote from the book, picked because it is really what I want to be the future of the human race, that we can and will be different but that those differences won't matter.
"And what she wanted more than anything that moment was for all the differences between people to matter no more--differences in size and race and belief--differences that had become justification for destruction."

Trudi Montag, a manipulative, resentful, nosy dwarf uses the secrets she gathers to extract her revenge on the townspeople who consider themselves superior and shun her, during the period from the First to Second World Wars in Burgdorf, Germany. As far as synopses go, that would be pretty accurate but it wouldn't make you want to read the book. The main character may be less than sympathetic, but she is sharp and observant, and paints finely tuned, sensitive, and insightful pictures of her fellow citizens and the German psyche, as they are sucked into the tragic spiral of WWII. Inexplicably, Trudi herself is saved from being sent to the death camps, because although she is arrested, the German officer handling her case lets her go because she saves her life by charming him with her storytelling (à la Scheherazade), plus the fact that he is having an existential sturm und drang crisis that will eventually cost him his life, so we are told.
At the end of the story, Trudi reveals that the reason she has told this story is to honor the boy who was once her best friend Georg, and to tell each person's story. She also expounds on the imagery of the river, drawing comparisons to herself and the accumulation of experiences of her life. As a pretext, it is pretty flimsy. In terms of storytelling, it is a reasonable effort, but it does tend to meander and get lost in different eddies and currents that might make you think that they are leading somewhere as part of a directed narrative with deliberate construction, when in fact the end result is a sequence of tangentially linked incidents. That is the problem that historical novels often face: they are driven by the necessities of telling the story to fit the historical facts as they unfolded, as opposed to having a literary and narrative structure. Author Ursula Hegi also has a bit of trouble handling the large number of characters. Because there are so many characters, she ends up having to provide contextual information each time they reappear. The result is that the writing becomes over expository. The reader is given all of the information, interpretations, and explanations; there is nothing subtle, nothing that goes unstated. It is a reasonably good story, but not a great novel.

This is one of the books that I recognize as being objectively wonderful in spite of my own ambivalence about it. It's about a young dwarf named Trudi Montag, and her life in a small fictional German town during the rise and fall of the Holocaust.

All throughout her childhood, Trudi yearns to belong, and when she finally does—being German rather than Jewish—the irony is that she no longer wants to. Trudi recognizes from the very beginning that what's going on around her isn't right, and eventually she and her father begin harboring Jews in their home.

One of the ways this book is so successful is in illustrating the steady rise of the horrific. The people in Trudi's town—decent people she has known her whole life—become complicit with the Nazi regime, either out of fear or misguided conviction that Hitler is doing what's best for their country. This insight felt eerily timely given current events—a warning of how easy it is for seemingly decent people to gradually come to abide unacceptable cruelty.

There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed and the writing was good, but at 525 pages, it was too detailed and drawn out for my liking—with a wide cast of characters. I appreciated Trudi's personal journey toward self-acceptance and her gradual realization that we each must create a sense of meaning and belonging for ourselves, but much of the supporting characters' stories felt tedious.

I think many readers would love and appreciate this book more than I did, and while I'm glad to be finished with it, I also don't regret reading it.

What I learned from this book- just because it's on a popular book list does not necessarily make it a must read book. By the end I was sighing a lot and wishing it were over. I don't even remember why it was so bad- that in itself is a testament to how awful it was.

Right from the start I need to preface this review with the fact that I know my review will not do this story justice. It is a most eloquent story told through Trudi, a dwarf born in a small German town during WWI. This story actual begins during the first World War and continues through the second World War.

Trudi struggles with being a dwarf and hangs from her hands to stretch her body and tightly ties scarves around her head to keep it from getting any bigger. She yearns for love and believes that she will not find love as a dwarf. She supplements her desire by learning others secrets and using them to be somewhat of a storyteller. Trudi endures teasing and general shunning by people all her life, but manages to come through WWII, even though The Reich is know to use such anomalies as test subjects.

As the story moves nearer to WWII, the sense of doom was so overwhelming to me, I nearly found myself screeching out loud. I had not previously read a book that included Hitler's promises to the people nor did I completely understand why they went along with the terrible things he did, but I do now. I really felt the gradual control shift as Hitler started his programs and recruited the young-it was just eerie.

Trudi is sort of a tough cookie and may annoy the reader at times with her fierce independence and stubborn behavior, but don't let that throw you off her trail because you would miss out on one of the most moving pieces of literature out there. A truly moving and interesting story with a hint of folklore, I highly recommend this read.

Fairly certain this would have been in the five star range if I hadn't had to take a break from it due to a concussion...Had a tough time with keeping track of the characters after a two week hiatus. Loved the story...loved the perspective...

It was like that with stories: she could see beneath their surface, know the undercurrents, the whirlpools that could take you down, the hidden clusters of rocks. Stories could blind you, rise around you in a myriad of colors. Every time Trudi took a story and let it stream through her mind from beginning to end, it grew fuller, richer, feeding on her visions of those people the story belonged to until it lefts its bed like the river she loved. And it was then that she'd have to tell the story to someone.

I've read lots of brilliant books about WWII, but mostly they were plot driven and focused on the protagonists involved. Stones from the River is different in that it describes the lives of many of the inhabitants of Burgdorf (a small fictional German village) from 1915 to 1951. It is beautifully written, but a book you need to immerse yourself in, definitely not a quick easy read. I have a much better understanding of the years building up to WWII, how Hitler convinced so many people to support him, and (for me) most intriguing how people lived with themselves and each other after the war ended.

I think two aspects of the author's writing that I admired most was firstly that she never dramatized anything. In this it reminded me of The Diary of a Young Girl, humans can get used to almost anything. Secondly, she introduces us to a a big cast of convincing and memorable characters - they include the good, the bad and the ugly. Each of these individual stories could have filled a book, but together they give us a much better idea and understanding of what happened.

GR recommended this to me because I loved The Poisonwood Bible, and I have to agree that the feel is very similar.

An interesting and different perspective on the horrors of WW2. Beautifully written.

Even though it took me a long time to read it, I was still very engaged with the story. I loved the way Hegi would hint at things that would happen in the future, or look back on things that had happened in the past. Her writing style was detailed but easy to read, and the description didn’t overpower the message she was trying to convey. Furthermore, the themes of forgiveness, storytelling, and the value in being different were really prevalent. Hegi’s writing easily could have been preachy, but it wasn’t, and I found myself genuinely looking at my own life and reflecting. The one thing I wished is that the stones from the river played a more integral part at the end of the story. Super good, 10/10 would recommend!

3.0 STARS

My fascination with WWII is insatiable, especially the European theatre of the war and the social and political climate leading up to the conflict. Virtually all of the books I’ve read on the subject come from the point of view of the protagonists - military officers, political leaders, heads of state, resistance fighters, spy agencies, field commanders and the like. I wanted to hear from the common citizens of Europe and their perspective on the war. How did they feel? What did they think?

I put out a call for recommendations to my GR friends and KS Katie answered my call! This story satisfied my need to see the war at the grass roots level, from the streets, shops and neighborhoods in the small town of Burgdorf. Published in 1994, the language of the book seems tame, grammatically and poetically massaged and polished, compared to documented horrors and atrocities that occurred during the rise and fall of the Third Reich, but highly effective and emotional nonetheless. Without graphic descriptions of the violence, the reader fully understands what is taking place … the disappearances, the abuse, the rape, the propaganda, the others!

Told through the voice of Trudi Montag, the story begins in 1915 and the impact of WWI on the citizens of Burgdorf through the post war era through 1952 and the quiet evasion, misrepresentation and denial of culpability for the destruction and atrocities of WWII.

As a little girl Trudi prayed to grow just like all the other kids until she understood there was no God magic. She also came to understand the power of being different while concurrently enduring the agony and loneliness of marginalization. But through this dismissal to the edge, her difference creating transparency that kept her present but unseen, Trudi was able to hear the conversation not intended for others, listen to the adults speak about what was happening in the town and the nation, and challenge some of the radical ideas embraced my some of her neighbors without being whisked away by the men in the black uniforms and suits. Her work with literature at her father’s third generation pay library and ability to understand the nuances and inferences of quiet language of the adults turned her into a story teller, stories she lived in to escape from the pain of her loneliness and jealousies and the tragedy around her that few of the towns people acknowledged or denied.

The stories streamed through her head like the waters of the river near the dike, passing over and around the stones, swirling in the patterns of the season, colored by the volume of the water. Her stories were just like the river. Her stories also preserved the truth, a truth she carried with her for a lifetime.

The emotions of this story are nuanced but intense, especially the pain of loneliness inflicted by the human reaction to difference.

As I made my way through the story I couldn’t help but think about the past four years in our nation, late 2015 through early 2021, the politics of the other, of marginalization, the scapegoating of ethnic groups or ideas to divide a nation and preserve power, sans the state sponsored genocide, slave labor and arbitrary imprisonment. How close did we come to a fascist dictatorship by first ignoring it, then tolerating it, before finally realizing the peril at hand? Equally frightening is the denial of these events. The Germans did the same although they waited too long, far past the tipping point and fell into the abyss of the horrors of authoritarianism, right wing nationalism and harsh social order. More evidence that history repeats over and over and over.

Thanks for the recommendation Katie! Great story.