The Nutcracker by ETA Hoffman

translated by Joachim Neugroschel

(See, isn't it pretty?)

So, before Christmas I posted about the awesome Penguin Classics set we received.  This is one of those and I started reading it aloud to MeiMei (because she loved the picture book version) and finished by myself after the first of the year.

I have no idea what to say about this one....

On the one hand-- LOVE the gorgeous edition. 

On the other hand-- Nutcracker is a really screwy book.  Yeah, no way MeiMei would have lasted through the whole thing. Violent, confusing, bizarre.  Heck, I finished it and I'm still confused.

It honestly makes me wonder how much is lost in translation-- certainly there are concepts that simply don't translate culturally.  Maybe I should hunt down a copy in German.... as though I still had the German skills for that. HA!

The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach

3.5 stars
copy received for review

A short little read-- novella really.

Some parts lag... badly even, in places.

And then the ending is really abrupt.

So overall the feel is very strange, but it was interesting and it certainly makes you think about the legal ramifications of the case in the story.

And the emotional and human ramifications.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant

5 stars
R-0

Really really enjoyed this book.  I felt it was quite well-written.

Loved the setting and the sprinkles of German-- trotted out my rusty high school German. lol

There are loose ends and unanswered questions at the end, but since the narrator is a young woman relating what happened several years earlier when she was a child, it works.  You don't feel like things were missed, it's just that the narrator doesn't have the answers.

A warning, though, it is a bit darker than I expected.  Maybe I just didn't read the summary closely, but I expected a lighter book.

Overall, it feels a lot like a modern fairy tale.  Definitely recommended.

(This is a Reader's Choice book!)