The Book: Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi
The Story: Trudi and her father run a pay library in Germany during WWII. She is a dwarf and she has kind of surrounded herself with misfits. Her best friend Georg, her crazy mom, her boyfriend…. they are not all accepted by society, but they make a decision to love each other and just kind of go with it. They band together during this rough time just to ” make it” and form a really incredible life together.
What I Thought: This came highly, highly recommended from my mom. We generally have a pretty similar taste in books, but I thought that #1- this sounded lame and #2- that the Oprah sticker on the front made me gag a little. I left it on my TBR pile for a long time before I decided to dive in.
Here’s the thing: this wasn’t a super easy read. I complained on Twitter when I was reading it because I felt like I was reading it forever. It took me over a week to read, which is absolutely unheard of for me. The author is incredible, she really is, but she makes you work for it. The cast of characters and the span of time that this book cover are both just absolutely staggering. There is a lot going on here and the author doesn’t mince on details. This makes this a really rich book, but something to be savored and not just devoured.
That’s my only “complaint.” This is an amazing book and if I could make you read it, I would.
Here’s my favorite part: Trudi is a dwarf, but not one single time does the author make her seem like a freak or a child or less than human or anything other than a normal girl/teenager/woman who just happened to be really short. I loved that. Like in The Night Listener where the main characters were these gay men, but that was just part of them, not what defined them. That is how real life is and I love when authors can write that way. Trudi was just this wonderful, full-of-life character and it was easy to forget that she was a dwarf- exactly how when you know someone with a handicap in real life you can easily forget about it after you have gotten to know them. Good work, Ulga Hegi.
Even beyond falling in love with Trudi, I just fell in love with this world that the author created. The characters were vibrant. The setting was perfectly done. The plot chugged right along. This is just a case of all the pieces coming together perfectly and creating this really great thing.
At its heart, this book is just about being different but also being the same. It’s about loving each other despite and because of all these “weird” things that make us who we are. That’s an important lesson at anytime, but in WWII Germany, it seems especially potent.
Conclusion: Read this. Right now.