Rating: 3/5
Imagine the soft sound a fresh loaf of bread makes when you squeeze it. Or the bitter taste of dark chocolate on the palate. And a gunshot and smells of war. Ruin, smoke, rotting corpses… And flickering hope of new beginnings. That is the core of this book.
The story follows two timelines. A teenage German girl, Elsie, and her baker family during WWII, and a modern-day struggle of a journalist, Reba, in Texax, near the Mexico border.
The Germany plotline is fascinating and written with unusual care for interesting and important details. Many large-scale horrors of war are just hinted. It serves the book well. It is not a horror, it is historical fiction. What truly stand out are the sad and gradually worsening everyday reality things. Elsie and her family have to deal with the loss of dear people. Messages about more death and destruction reach them every single day. They need to run the bakery despite shortening supplies. They need to think about their home and their own bodies grow thinner and more and more damaged as the war nears its end. Their life views and personal philosophies shake just like the bombed cities. They also provide a great example of ordinary people raised in propaganda-soaked reality. Giving birth to boys in the Lebensborn program and seeing no better future for them than dying as soldiers for their land, seeing a huge part of natural Germany population as not worthy to live, and giving up one’s whole personality to serve the mighty German nation are what is expected from the Germans. But humanity and hope still leak through the cold system.
The gradual loss of everything until only rubble remains is chilling. But it does not throw the reader into desperation. The whole book breathes with pastry, chocolate, and cinnamon. Many scenes take place in two bakeries and it is unavoidable to dream about the foods the characters eat or bake while the plot goes on. The descriptions always blend with the action of the characters and there are no cases of excessive food insertions just for the sake of mentioning pastry. German cooking and culture stick out from the pages. They are great examples of the good aspects of Germany. The traditional foods and clothing are what was before Hitler and what helped Germany rise again as a decent country.
The modern Texas plotline stars Reba. A journalist with many psychological issues on her journey to discover who she is and what she wants. She needs to deal with many scars from her childhood. And face her caring fiancee and her own reluctance to marry. She meets old Elsie in her new American bakery and their lives touch for a few important months. This plotline features a complicated and aching illegal immigration problem. It cleverly focuses on the modern-day differences between people. Long after young Elsie experienced starvation and war horrors, there are still people in a desperate situation. The Mexican immigrants often live in terrible conditions and they see illegal bord crossing as their only hope to live, not just wait for death in their home. They wish to give their starving uneducated children a promise of a better future and this novel, again, gives hints about many the horrors they need to go through. I saw many people complain the author tried to show Holocaust and illegal immigration as equal. I did not feel this during reading. I saw the struggles of the many people in the Texas plotline as mere examples of people’s suffering at any time and any place. Illegal migration is a grey problem where the ideals of law and the actual terrible reality of individuals clash. Rikki, Reba’s fiancee, demonstrated this problem to the readers well and his psychological struggles enriched the book and provided a lot of material to think about.
Reba, the main character of the 21st century timeline, is anything but likable to me. She has many good reasons to be the person she is. The book describes her childhood and teenage years struggles well and it is understandable she is scarred by the loss in her family and briefly touching the horrors of the Vietnam war. But her character truly did not work for me and I could not connect with her. However, this is my personal opinion. As I stated, Reba has reasons to behave the way she does.
While the story itself is enjoyable and full of thought-provoking and interesting passages, the form of the book is what makes the reading experience far less enjoyable than the plot would deserve. The various timelines do not flow well. Reading often felt disjointed and forced. The different pieces of the stories appear here and there without a solid link. The various jumps during the years and alternations between ordinary prose and epistolary letters would benefit from a smoother approach that would make the book more natural. The book features Elsie’s and Reba’s main points of view. But there is a small number of solitary POVs of different side characters. It was obvious they were there only to carry the needed information and I found this disturbance of Elsie’s and Reba’s flipping POVs jarring. The form of the novel looks like a draft that needs much more work.
The characters happen to fall into bonds and relationships without really knowing why. Apparently, only one look into the eyes of a man is enough to start a deep romantic relationship that makes Elsie do huge life decisions. Her connection with the Jewish boy, Tobias, is simply stated as well and I hoped to see more emotion from Elsie. And more thoughts about the Holocaust from the view of a German who happens to hide a Jew.
Characters who have never seen each other before behave as if they knew everything about the other character and have ground to start spilling wise advice. Or behave like a family for no logical reason at all. Reba’s connection with old Elsie and her family needs much more to make sense, for example. All the characters are put into situations and are forced to have dialogues for the sake of the plot. But when the reader attempts to think about why should the characters act and speak the way they do, there are only a few situations when it really makes sense.
Overall, this book was enjoyable for one-time reading and it carries several important and complex topics. But the draft-like form took away a huge portion of the story’s charm.
Glenn's Nest 