Mary Harrison > Recent Status Updates

George Sand's first novel. Influences include Richardson's Clarissa. Plenty of politics and a view of marriage as a form of enslavement. A little overly romantic and dramatic, but I loved it

This volume covers 1945-1947. Rostock is under Russian control. Walter's brother Robert returns from the front but his father is reported dead & his grandfather dies. The family make plans to leave & Walter reaches Hamburg with his grandfather's ashes. Life in the west under American administration isn't perfect. Walter returns to Rostock & is arrested. If you leave & return, there are questions to be answered

Haven't had much time for reading lately, but have finally returned to The Ministry. There are new characters and the approach to storytelling is much more realistic and brutal. And then suddenly two of the old characters reappear and what has been a confusing section, at least for me, begins to make more sense. Definitely challenging!

A change of narrator. Now the narration has shifted to the first person and we are being allowed into the mind and thoughts of an individual and it all feels less like a fairy tale

i feel that the reader is kept at some distance from the characters. I am an observer, perhaps a voyeur, but I do not really know these people. They seem to be part of a myth or a legend ... a hint of magic realism ... and yet real and very terrible events unfold around them. 9/11, the cruel and bitter conflict between Hindu and Muslim, the ruthless rise of the modern technocratic state. I am intrigued.

i feel that the reader is kept at some distance from the characters. I am an observer, perhaps a voyeur, but I do not really know these people. They seem to be part of a myth or a legend ... a hint of magic realism ... and yet real and very terrible events unfold around them. 9/11, the cruek and bitter conflict between Hindu and Muslim, the ruthless rise of the modern technocratic state. I am intrigued.