As I read I felt there was something new and yet also, at the same time, something deeply familiar going on in this novel. This "new, but familiar" feeling remained an unresolved puzzle until the name "Eugene Ionesco" popped unexpectedly into my head. Yes. As soon as I realized how much I was reminded of Ionesco, the seemingly scattered pieces of "Gretel and the Great War" resolved themselves a puzzle coming together on its own. I could appreciate the whole of the thing at once. I could come to terms with how the pointlessness of some events in this story could also feel, at the same time, full of meaning. I could appreciate the way moments of disgust could feel moments of joyous wonder. The chaos felt rich and life-affirming, rather than nihilistic. The novel reminds me so strongly of the workings of last century's Absurdists. It gives me the same feeling of 'yes, this story is absurd, just as human life is absurd, and even so, I feel joy when reading these pages, because what I'm reading reminds me that I love to be alive."2024 fsg25 s1 comment James B540 19

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This book is finding a box of morality tales/fables from a hundred years ago. In 1919 Vienna, a young woman who can not speak is found walking the streets. When a doctor asks the public for any information about the woman, he gets 26 tales, one to be read to the woman, only identified as Gretel, one at a time before she goes to sleep. The tales come from a man who claims to be her father and currently resides in the local sanatorium. These tales show a society as it is about to vanish after the coming war. Haunting, with people and places appearing again and again.4 s Ilya47 12

Imagine the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales reimagined and retold by someone David Foster Wallace. Imagine also that, “The Decameron” or “The Canterbury Tales,” the stories are subject to a single framing device—here, they are bedtime stories told to a young girl with a mysterious nervous disorder by a patient of a mental institution. Set in post-WWI Vienna. Oh, and the stories are arranged in alphabetical order, from the one about an architect to the one about a Zionist. How is that?

In many ways, “Gretel and the Great War” is as strange as that (faithful) description suggests. It is also, for the most part, very funny and, toward the end, very poignant. It is also more than a framed story collection—as we make our way through the alphabet, we begin to find our bearings by spotting recurring characters and tracing the connections through the stories’ plot lines. It is clever and entertaining, although the effect wears off as the page count grows. I suspect that multiple readings would be required to track every thread, but a certain weariness that sets in even on the first reading makes that kind of an undertaking unly.

Still, this is an original, inventive work that deserves and rewards the attention.

(Many thanks, as always, to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC via NetGalley.)1 Fran707 829

The war to end all wars had taken its toll on Vienna. In 1919, a voiceless and nameless young woman wandered the streets. Appeals for information on her identity were answered solely by a sanatorium patient claiming to be "Gretel's" father. He insisted that he wrote her twenty-six bedtime stories, labeled A to Z. He asked the neurologist treating her to read Story A: The Architect, then B: The Ballet Master and continue until all stories were completed. Query: "Did the neurologist read the stories to her? Did she understand the stories? Did she ever acquire the faculty of speech?"

Gretel must be sheltered. Story A tells of an architect designing a simple, uncomplicated building. "...alarmingly simple...[with a ] completely unadorned facade. [Decoration] will pose a threat to her innocence. Flowerboxes are hung beneath every window at dawn and removed at dusk...By means of these delightful arrangements the architect is in reality sending...messages...crucial to her continued survival in a city already complicated."

The sounds of church music. The Choirmaster tried to engage fifty-five rambunctious boys. "No one can possibly know how the choir sounded a century ago...a trace of memory of the canonical composers sound has indeed been preserved in the collective consciousness of the city." When the Choirmaster's past catches up with him, he is sent to Sanatorium Dr. Krakauer.

The explorer "exists in his entirety only upon entering empty places on earth." "Everyday he lingers in this city, this contrived, hypocritical, highly populated city. The coffeehouse he frequents is patronized mainly by...poets and pseudo-revolutionaries...who romanticize and mimic in their work [symptoms] of psychosis considered to be characteristic of city living, such that the 'explorer' has become for them a model...source of creative inspiration...".

A court jeweler who has created dazzling pieces for the aristocracy had crafted jewels for his wife on the occasion of the birth of his son. When his wife wears the jewels, the baby will not nurse. The infant seems bewitched and is confined to their townhouse. Twenty years pass with the wife overwhelmed as round-the-clock caregiver. Until...one day...she remembers beauty...the world of symphonies, quartets and quintets.

Royalty must be provided with bears, boars and stags to hunt. This works at cross purposes with the agenda of the kindergarten teacher who can no longer kow tow to the curriculum. The Headmaster has forbidden the teacher from taking her students into the woods. "This curriculum hurls the child...into an airless world of ungrounded abstraction." She wants to show the children that "the hare hops, the stag leaps, the leaves fall". She takes her class to the woods to explore nature.

This reader's favorite bedtime story was about the veteran. "He is in line for vegetables. He must not lose his coins or spend them on anything but vegetables." Mother needs them for soup. He hobbles forward using one crutch. People turn their backs. "The world sees him differently now because of what happened at the Visula." He wishes for a kiss on his lips, nothing more. A small woman, sitting on a gentleman's knee, beckons him. A con... conducted by a ventriloquist. Now he has lost his money and his place in line but cannot return home without the vegetables.

"Gretel and the Great War" is an inventive and unusual work of literary fiction. Arguably, it seems that the ideas of Freud about innocence or lack of naivete are portrayed in Gretel's father's attempts to isolate and protect her. In the setting of wartime Vienna, a gung ho reporter, with a cushy job, was suddenly called up. A soldier shortage, and to the infantry he must go. A returning vet faced abandonment by friends and neighbors who looked the other way. Would Gretel be able to embrace life in post-war Vienna?

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

46 s26 comments Preeti Mahatme159 12

We all grew up reading fairy tales and listening to bedtime stories. Adam Elrich Sachs gives us a fresh chance at that in this creative book written in a very unique structure. This book is a compilation of short chapters, each chapter a story. Each story's chapter heading starts with a letter of the alphabet. For eg: A for Architect, B for Ballet Master and so on. The stories are interconnected and have recurring characters, venues and props. A young mute girl, Gretel, is found wandering the streets of Vienna and is handed over to the care of a doctor. When the doctor writes an article about her, she receives a parcel of 26 bedtime stories, arranged in alphabetical order from a patient in a sanatorium who claims to be her father. These stories are an ode to Venetian life and society in the 19th century just following the end of World War I also known as the Great War. The art, the choirs, the ballet and the stage performances. The rise of new scientific and philosophical thought and the controversies surrounding them. The abundance and threat of so-called sanatoriums or mad-houses where inconvenient persons, mostly women were confined and left to the mercy of dubious doctors. The opulence and shenanigans of the Duke and his royal entourage. Since the stories are in alphabetical order, the storyline is not linear and you may be confused in the beginning. Just read on though and it will all come together in the end. I loved the author's skill in masterfully crafting this beautiful jigsaw puzzle out of word-worthy prose. One of those books that will definitely benefit from a re-reading or book club discussion. \
Thank you Netgalley, FSG Books and Adam Ehrlich Sachs for the ARC. Book Club of One349 19

Gretel and the Great War embraces the structure of the abecedarium to tell 26 different bedtimes stories to a mute child named Gretel. She was found wandering the streets of post World War I in Vienna, and the doctor treating her believes her feral and to never have heard any language. After he publishes requests for information, a man who claims to be her father responds from his sanatorium with one story a day for 26 days.

Each story, seemingly its own subject, uses the letter of an alphabet to supply a career (examples: architect, ballet master, choirmaster, etc.) and then provide a short story about that person, their family, and some pivotal moment or event. The further into the alphabet, the more the reader sees recurrent images and intersections with other stories.

Stories within stories that are more concerned with the interwar years than the First World War. Although linking with many real life figures or their ideas and artistic works it is very much a liminal feeling book, the war changed Europe irreparably but a 'peace' of sorts has been established. Monarchy is gone, what will be built? The aristocrats in the stories are scrambling or heavily in denial, with many a patient being sent or choosing to go the sanatorium.

Sachs offers many stories to show a father reckoning with his failure to prepare his daughter for a world that no longer exists and the many ways a family can fall apart, and a few ways it can remain together.

Recommended to readers of non traditional fiction, Trojan horse stories or literary fiction.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.fiction historical-fiction netgalley Marissa Macias41

Thank you NetGalley and FSG Originals for the advanced digital copy in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own and are not influenced by outside factors.

True rating 2.5, but rounded down for accuracy purposes.

I'll start off with what I enjoyed about the book. I loved the whimsical, almost fairy-tale story telling. It was a unique writing style that should be used more often. The author did a really great job at making me travel back in time to child- wonder.

The problem I found with this was the story turned to be a little too confusing. I would have appreciated some sort of family tree or map at the end of the book just to confirm who I was reading about and where they fit into it all.

I did think the length helped with this issue quite a lot because if it were any longer, there would have been too much fluff writing. Overall, a nice break from the usual reads, but would be infinitely better with some more clarification.

Bookstagram: @marissasatheneum MauroAuthor 5 books131

If I told you there’s a novel that consists of 26 letters from a (deranged) father to his daughter, which are dark (but funny) stories within stories, would you be interested?

Don’t trust the philistines who received free galleys of this fantastic novel. Trust me, your friendly neighborhood experimental writer.6 s Annie Tate Cockrum100 9

Gretel and the Great War takes on a very interesting form - being made up of 26 "bedtime" stories, each beginning with a character who corresponds the letters of the alphabet ie the architect, the ballerina, and so forth. The stories build on each other in subtle ways and each one is absurd, quite silly, and pretty dark. An interesting and unique read! This book publishes on June 11th. J R1,032 14

Inventive, odd and very unusual. A lot of wacky weird alliterative characters here interacting with each other (or sometimes not doing theat.) would recommend, it’s also very short. Thanks for the arc Patrick Redford24 2

he’s done it again Josh Escandon35 1 follower

Autor del comentario:
=================================