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strawfly14's review against another edition
3.0
Llegué a este libro por casualidad tras verlo recomendado en la biblioteca y, aunque por el argumento que tenía en la solapa me esperaba otra cosa, me ha gustado. Es una lectura corta pero profunda, emotiva, y te da el punto de vista de los judíos en Ucrania mediante los ojos de una ama de casa cristiana. Está bastante interesante.
katyoctober's review against another edition
5.0
I’m Katherine, so anything eponymous calls my name (ha!). Why did I love ‘Katerina’ so much? I enjoyed ‘Suddenly, Love’ by Aharan Appelfeld, which I read last Summer in lockdown, very much.
Why did I love this book so much when really, it’s about my worst nightmare - being born a poor peasant woman in ~1860s Austrian empire*, illiterate, raped, homeless, unloved, and eventually, imprisoned and losing children? (this is all in the synopsis on the back of the book).
This form of short, translated novel which is a story of woe and misery illuminated with dots of hope deemed never to be fulfilled I found reminiscent of one of my favourite authors, Patrick Suskind (‘Perfume’ and ‘The Pigeon’.)
The atmosphere - the roughness of the barns and taverns, the markets, the bitterness of the Czernowitz Winter, the intensely religious mores of the time - feels so real. I was so shocked to find the book was written in around 1980; I thought it was much more of a period piece.
*Note: Above, I refer to “Austrian empire”, our heroine, Katerina, lived in what is now modern-day Ukraine. She’s a village girl, a “Ruthenian”, which is a term which interested me very much. In a pre-global era, of course national identity came second place to local identity, and Ruthenians were Slavic people from Eastern Europe. The area had a strong German influence at the time. There are plenty of politics around this, and borders have changed so much over the centuries. What is more important, it seems, is Katerina’s identity as a village girl. Being born a village girl, she is destined to always remain tied to the village, and limited in how far she can get in life, both metaphorically and physically. Though she indeed tries to escape from the village in her mind or in running to the mountains (in the hopeful chapters in the first third of the book, with the boys); she is forever plagued by nightmares and dreams of the village; she is tracked down, or bumps into fellow villagers who remember her and her family. When she tries to pass inconspicuously through the larger towns and cities she visits as she matures, she is unmistakably a “village girl” to all who encounter her. It defines her.
Page 22 - “Anyone who was born in a village knows that life is no party.”
So many quotes, but this one burned my eyes.
I think this novel would work very, very well as a film. Katerina would be a wonderful people’s heroine. I love stories of normal people, not royals. Her story is in many ways the story of all people, and women in particular, throughout history - survival against the elements, against others, despite ineffable vulnerability. I was rooting for her. She learns to read. This plot point is one that I have a real weakness for - there were too many wonderful moments to quote all in this review, but the point where an uneducated character learns to read and a whole new world is open to them will always get me. When they will do anything to get their hands on parchment, quill, candle and books…I love it.
To me, this is a proper novel. Character and plot is so strong. I couldn’t believe how well the author could inhabit the mind of Katerina. A critic writes on the front of my copy that “..[he] works a kind of magic”, and I’d agree. I stayed up late reading this. The book streams along, driven by external and internal pushes on and from within Katerina. The characterisation / voice is so strong that it’s the kind of book where you can be interrupted and immediately resume your reading, immersed in the world.
I just love Appelfeld’s style of writing so much. I’m wondering if rather than losing, there’s something added in translation. It’s hard to put my finger on but it’s something I’ve noticed across many translated books that I’ve enjoyed. It’s the extra hours that the translator spends to get to the ore of the meaning of the author’s original words, and putting them into English. Sadlly, I’ll never speak Hebrew to be able to comment if it is this or the original. I quite like having that question open, anyway.
Finally, of course this book is about the continual horror of the holocaust, and the pogroms and anti semitism that preceded (and followed it). It’s devastating but all too familiar to read about the way that small-minded villagers are not just innocently simple and stuck in their ways, but highly bigoted. It is not just words, though - upon festival days, and when alcohol is involved, their violence intensifies. Does this sound familiar, in 2021?
I think the author does a great job of demonstrating the particular pervasiveness of antisemitism, its specific nature as a form of bigotry which seems to exist across cultures and times. It was devastating to read.
I mentioned this book is about women, about class, about ethnicity - it’s clear to the reader the many injustices Katerina suffers living at the intersection of being a poor woman; and through her adjacency to Jews. This then brings us to her injustice prison sentence - again, nothing changes, but nothing changes.
I hope to read this book again, I wanted to as soon as I’d finished. There is a lot more I could say about this but I’ll stop here. It will stay with me for a long time. Very rich, very good.
Why did I love this book so much when really, it’s about my worst nightmare - being born a poor peasant woman in ~1860s Austrian empire*, illiterate, raped, homeless, unloved, and eventually, imprisoned and losing children? (this is all in the synopsis on the back of the book).
This form of short, translated novel which is a story of woe and misery illuminated with dots of hope deemed never to be fulfilled I found reminiscent of one of my favourite authors, Patrick Suskind (‘Perfume’ and ‘The Pigeon’.)
The atmosphere - the roughness of the barns and taverns, the markets, the bitterness of the Czernowitz Winter, the intensely religious mores of the time - feels so real. I was so shocked to find the book was written in around 1980; I thought it was much more of a period piece.
*Note: Above, I refer to “Austrian empire”, our heroine, Katerina, lived in what is now modern-day Ukraine. She’s a village girl, a “Ruthenian”, which is a term which interested me very much. In a pre-global era, of course national identity came second place to local identity, and Ruthenians were Slavic people from Eastern Europe. The area had a strong German influence at the time. There are plenty of politics around this, and borders have changed so much over the centuries. What is more important, it seems, is Katerina’s identity as a village girl. Being born a village girl, she is destined to always remain tied to the village, and limited in how far she can get in life, both metaphorically and physically. Though she indeed tries to escape from the village in her mind or in running to the mountains (in the hopeful chapters in the first third of the book, with the boys); she is forever plagued by nightmares and dreams of the village; she is tracked down, or bumps into fellow villagers who remember her and her family. When she tries to pass inconspicuously through the larger towns and cities she visits as she matures, she is unmistakably a “village girl” to all who encounter her. It defines her.
Page 22 - “Anyone who was born in a village knows that life is no party.”
So many quotes, but this one burned my eyes.
I think this novel would work very, very well as a film. Katerina would be a wonderful people’s heroine. I love stories of normal people, not royals. Her story is in many ways the story of all people, and women in particular, throughout history - survival against the elements, against others, despite ineffable vulnerability. I was rooting for her. She learns to read. This plot point is one that I have a real weakness for - there were too many wonderful moments to quote all in this review, but the point where an uneducated character learns to read and a whole new world is open to them will always get me. When they will do anything to get their hands on parchment, quill, candle and books…I love it.
To me, this is a proper novel. Character and plot is so strong. I couldn’t believe how well the author could inhabit the mind of Katerina. A critic writes on the front of my copy that “..[he] works a kind of magic”, and I’d agree. I stayed up late reading this. The book streams along, driven by external and internal pushes on and from within Katerina. The characterisation / voice is so strong that it’s the kind of book where you can be interrupted and immediately resume your reading, immersed in the world.
I just love Appelfeld’s style of writing so much. I’m wondering if rather than losing, there’s something added in translation. It’s hard to put my finger on but it’s something I’ve noticed across many translated books that I’ve enjoyed. It’s the extra hours that the translator spends to get to the ore of the meaning of the author’s original words, and putting them into English. Sadlly, I’ll never speak Hebrew to be able to comment if it is this or the original. I quite like having that question open, anyway.
Finally, of course this book is about the continual horror of the holocaust, and the pogroms and anti semitism that preceded (and followed it). It’s devastating but all too familiar to read about the way that small-minded villagers are not just innocently simple and stuck in their ways, but highly bigoted. It is not just words, though - upon festival days, and when alcohol is involved, their violence intensifies. Does this sound familiar, in 2021?
I think the author does a great job of demonstrating the particular pervasiveness of antisemitism, its specific nature as a form of bigotry which seems to exist across cultures and times. It was devastating to read.
I mentioned this book is about women, about class, about ethnicity - it’s clear to the reader the many injustices Katerina suffers living at the intersection of being a poor woman; and through her adjacency to Jews. This then brings us to her injustice prison sentence - again, nothing changes, but nothing changes.
I hope to read this book again, I wanted to as soon as I’d finished. There is a lot more I could say about this but I’ll stop here. It will stay with me for a long time. Very rich, very good.
mslaura's review against another edition
4.0
Ratings:
Writing 5
Story line 4
Characters 4
Emotional impact 4
Overall rating: 4.25
Writing 5
Story line 4
Characters 4
Emotional impact 4
Overall rating: 4.25
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