Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Marzahn, Mon Amour

Marzahan, Mon Amour opens with a middle-aged author who is down on her publishing luck and is retraining as a chiropodist. The rest of the book unfolds in a series of short storyish vignettes, each one focussing on one of her clients or coworkers at the salon in Marzahan, a Berlin suburb in what was East Germany. This was a really warm-hearted read. The clients - all ordinary people, mostly older and often down on their luck, battling ill-health, loneliness or poverty - were treated so kindly by the narrator and their stories told in a very tender fashion . Each vignette was perfectly self-contained, but combined they built up a layered picture of the area, one that highlighted the impact of history, politics, and social policy on people, that really humanising the impacts of the former GDR. Being somewhat older myself I also appreciated the author’s thoughts on the realities of middle age. All in all a surprisingly compelling read, much more so than you would expect from a book about someone looking after other people’s feet to be.

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itsredandread's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

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lena04's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.0

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