An excellent story. Difficult to read at times because so much happens in one page. But wow you really felt for each character as they are described so well. The horrors of the war and what people lived. You felt you were their in the town.

This is really good, but dear god is it dense. Even as much as I was enjoying, it was still a real slog and I had to force myself through it. I kept thinking that it didn't need to be, but there was no changing that. A little less leaden in delivery, not even talking about subject matter, would have been nice.

I am lucky that I was trapped on a train for six hours going to Hartford and back, or I think I would have had a hard time getting into this one. Ultimately, it was a lovely and rewarding book-- but the first couple of hundred pages are all setup and a bit difficult to sludge through.

The book is about Trudi Montag, a young dwarf in rural Germany born to a WWI soldier and a crazy woman who grows up to defy the Nazis during WWII in her small town. The WWII portion of the book is fascinating and gripping. The large cast of small town characters provides an epic storyline and ample room for the author, Hegi, to play out a variety of dramatic wartime fates in creative detail.

Trudi's childhood, however, is less interesting and her post-war activity is almost entirely unmemorable (although such a short part of the book that hardly matters).

Ultimately, it is not a story of dramatic heroism, but about small and domestic heroic journeys -- which was very deftly handled. Certainly you walk away from the book feeling as if you and Trudi and her father Leo are all good friends and that they are courageous and admirable people well worth knowing.

I seem to remember reading a comparison to Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird somewhere. There is a limited similarity in that they are both set in rural Germany during WWII. But, Kosinski's work is by far the stronger-- although if you found his novel too graphic, too disturbing, and too painful, Stones From the River is a much easier and less challenging variation on a similar theme.

This was the first book I read with my new book club and I feel I need to rationalize the four- instead of five-star rating. The story is so important, and so deftly told, and the author does a great job of capturing the lives of citizens in a small German town from post-WWI through post-WWII. I felt like I came to know many of the characters personally. I cried several times. I had to really rethink what I know about history. And there were moments in the book where I literally had to stop reading just so that I could mentally and emotionally process what was happening.
But man oh MAN was it difficult to get into! I didn't hit my "reading stride" until well into the book, and still I continued to struggle through the rest of the way. Sure, there were passages that flowed wonderfully, filled with amazing, vivid imagery and flawless characterization. But, as my pal Emily said at our meeting: "She really made you work for it." Which, in no way means this is not a worthwhile book. After all, struggle, progress, interconnection, yadda yadda. But it's not one of those books that you "sink" into lazily and backstroke through the whole way. It's much more like treading carefully through a rocky-bottom stream, having to pause before each step, checking to find the most stable stone for your foot (which is already cut and bruised and sore), and all the while having to be alert enough so you don't get sidetracked by a floating log and bumped off of your foothold and back into a bed of unforgiving stones. Which, I guess, makes the title of the story just a little more apropos than it already is.

I was very disappointed in this book. I didn't care for the main character... Like, literally, I couldn't have cared less what happened to her.

Nor did I understand her. How could she remember everything about her mother from the time she was born? Her mother died before she turned 4 and she remembered everything? And she is psychic, I guess? All of these understandings of family secrets and approaching deaths... How? What? I didn't understand her character at all.

There were way too many characters in this book, I could not keep everyone straight. It could be because I found this book so tedious that it took me A MONTH to read because I just. did. not. care. about weird dwarf Trudi and her creepy psychic abilities.

And the ending? I have no idea what happened in the ending. But, it was dull and incomprehensible, just like the rest of this book. Anyone want to explain the ending? I am obviously not intellectual enough to work it out on my own, but I was very very glad that it was finally over.

This is a powerful novel. I had not read anything previously by the author, nor had I ever heard of her. That being said, I took great pains to read through this slowly because some passages deserved reading twice, some three times.

Trudi Montag is a Zwerg--a dwarf, born to normal-sized parents. Her mother is wholly distant; I get the feeling she is bipolar. She eventually flees from Trudi and her father. She has a friend, Georg, whose mother had never forgiven him for not being born a girl, so he was clad in dresses and hair ribbons. Eventually Trudi's mother is lost in her head and doesn't return to their home but, instead, stays under a house and sings to herself.

Trudi's father runs a pay-library. It sees lean times, but people always want to read. It also hosts the town's tobacco shop and people like to smoke whether times are good or bad. The pay-library is in their home, apart from the rest of the house. The town's characters are indeed that--characters, all of them colorful and personable. Hegl fleshes them out and endears all of them to us, her readers.

Read the book!

3.5

She stood firm in the midst of ridicule. She chose life in the middle of war. She took action instead of simply staying silent to atrocity. She gave people books and stories to take them away from their dismal worlds of hunger and strife. Despite being a little woman who was pitied and bullied because of her height, she chose people and books. She was not all good, but she was not all bad. She was human.

n  Staying close to the jetty, she'd streak through the shallow water like a frog, dive to the brown sediment of mud and let it billow around her, wishing her body matched its color so she could let it camouflage her. Here, the river belonged to her. In the water she felt graceful, weightless even, and when she moved her arms and legs, they felt long.n

This novel is about dreams, about the wants and desires of people forced into poverty, about the price for being different, about the cruelty of humanity.

She was born to a mother who went insane once she saw what seemed like a large head and small limbs of her beautiful daughter, Trudi. They call her a zwerg, dwarf. Friends betray her, attack her, misuse her. The town shuns her, pities her. Can she find happiness, she wonders constantly? Can she get married someday and have children? Can she love herself, or will she continue to hang from the molding in the living room, stretching her limbs in order to get taller? Despite her turmoil, she has a father's unconditional, tender love. She has stability at the pay-library they own. She has her imagination, and with it, she becomes powerful again and very useful to the town.

n  Somehow, this spring was infusing her with new strength and hope, a deceptive hope, she reminded herself, and yet it soothed her, took her back to the river where, in the shallows below the weeping willows, the water had taken on a peculiar shade of opaque green as though it had soaked up the color of the new leaves, a green that suggested tranquility, reverence almost.n

This story of the Montag family and the many characters that inhabit their lives during World War II Germany is not what I would call a page-turner. In the beginning it almost lost me, when a five-year old's point of view seemed too mature. Yet the novel is poised and elegiac. It moves at its own pace, inserts backstory between dialogue at its leisure, and infuses various character viewpoints at random moments. The story is sharp, the main character Trudi is alluring to follow, the scenes flow gracefully, and the infusing of political history is inciting and rich.

OK, yesterday I finished the book....... and I am having a very hard time choosing the stars and knowing what to say! Yes, it is a very, very good book, BUT STILL it only received 4 rather then 5 stars. The positive first! The book is speckled with marvelous lines that get you thinking. For example - "by getting closer to a smaller world, she had found a larger world." Think about that and how true it is! Trudi, the main character's father has died. She says, "What she missed most was the certainty of being able to share small details of your life with someone who knew you so well. Who else would possibly care what you'd thought while looking out of the window or what you'd eaten for breakfast?" I feel the reader is strengthened, can learn something about how to live their life by having these small inconsequential views pointed out. And of course, I agree.

On the larger scale, that which the book is maybe "talking about", is German behavior during the Second World War. This too was well depicted, allowing all different character types to be represented. This part of the book was very difficult for me to read. In all honesty, I began skimming. I couldn't deal with all the atrocities, depicted one after the other. There was no light anywhere, and in a sense I find this not to be correct. How do you get through terrible times? Only be seeking out the small things that can make one smile. Furthermore, the author discusses EVERYONE in the village. It got to be too much for me. I couldn't keep everyone straight, but yes I did care about them. How can you write a book that isn't depressing about a time such as this? Well the "Book Thief" by Kusak manages, by interspersing some points of joy in the blackness. It is possible to achieve. For this reason I finally chose 4 over 5 stars!

This book revolves around so many different themes: the value of story telling, how people choose to live their lives in so diametrically opposed manners, the value of kindness, what is it that makes one person valued by friends and another not, about being "different" and, if I can say it one more time, about kindness. Should I have given it 5 stars? Perhaps, but something keeps me back!

This was written when I started the book:

I have only read about 100 pages, but the writing has captured me. Beautiful! Not beautiful in a flat descriptive way, but more that the author captures the souls of her characters. Should I quote a few lines? I am not sure if that would clearly express how these lines make the characters come alive! Here follows one short line to chuckle over. When Trudi is invited by her friend Georg to the blessing of cars, bikes, farm machines and other vehicles by the holy water of the village pastor, Trudi is told by Herr Abramowitz that "catholic water rusts Jewish cars!"

Lately I have been reading such marvelous books. It is not that I am generous with praise, but rather that GoodReads is a fabulous site where readers can discover the books that they are seeking and where one is introduced to books that one has never before encountered. I just had to say that I really love this site! My only worry is that publishing companies and / or authors turn it into an advertising medium! What a shame that would be.

THis is a book about world war II and about being different. It is frighteningly honest. It is just brilliant and unlike anything else I have read. It is about a little person!

A town that during WWII where the inhabitants have to hide in the cellar when the bombers come over. Where a range of humanity is on display but not always acknowledged except by one woman who comes of age in this story: a prescient, anguished, hopeful woman whose own pain is recognized by her as one among many. Even at war's end, the challenge continues for those returning from war and those whose alliances now call them into question.

It is a town in Germany, where the bombs are those of the Allies and where a woman who is a Zwerg--the German term for dwarf. I read this when I saw a review of a woman who herself has dwarfism admiring the way in which the author draws this character and her challenges and reflections.

The characters seem unique and yet represent all of us. I can see myself in Trudi's concerns and reflections. Unlike many novels, I also had to stop reading at times to try to understand why the novel touched a long-ago memory or a present reality for me, or to consider how it called on me to rethink how I live my life and consider my future. It is not an apologist for the Germans but helps us see the complicated nature of war and its horrific consequences no matter what "side" you belong to. In fact, the idea of polarities drop away, yet the author doesn't just stoop to saying "we're all a mixed bag." She and the main character represent each of us questioning our world and coming up with some, but not all answers, and more than that, with a way to cope and move forward to navigate love and tragedy, loss and beauty.

What didn't I like? Some aspects seemed somewhat overdone--Trudi's ability to know, for instance, became for me more of a parlor trick than someone who just really listens and hears and feels. Some events even I could see coming (no spoilers here), and one in particular, a rather major one, seemed contrived as if the character had served their purpose and so now must conveniently go away. And it is a large cast of characters; I'm still not sure I remembered who everyone was, which led to some characters who got lost along the way.

While this was especially about the characters, I'm conflicted that most of the reality of the war seemed at a literal and metaphoric distance. Yet, in part, I wonder how much this was reality for some towns, and this rendering of a town that experienced some, but not the brunt of the effects of the war, helped narrow the gap between a regime such as Hitler's and those where injustices occur but we think, well, things could be worse. In other words, where are the lines of complicity? What actions should be taken? Just because it's a matter of degree doesn't mean that brutality is not ready to rear its ugly head out of fear and ignorance.

It was interesting reading this during COVID-19 quarantine and DJT as a hapless President. Given the fear of what lies outside my door, and feeling that the situation is only exacerbating social divides and casting about for scapegoats, this was definitely not an escapist novel. But luckily, the insight provided by the author in the way Trudi frames and reflects on her life has helped me think beyond the present circumstances and to consider how to start at a new place, and find a new way to see the world.

Trudi is a dwarf living n Germany during the Nazi Occupation. She and her father are among those who help the Jews to escape. It's a small town and many of the townspeople embrace Nazi beliefs. Trudi falls in love, but it is not reciprocated because the man cannot believe he has feelings for a dwarf. Trudi is an angry woman. She spends most of her life learning people's secrets so she can have some power. In her nager, she places ads in personal columns describing herself as beautiful. She then spies on each man who wants to meet her. One of the men courts her and they fall in love. Trudi lets go of her anger. She finally finds peace. She's able to eview her life, let go of all the hatred. beautifully written.