Customer Reviews

The Call of the Toad

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reconciliation and forewell. As in the "Danzig trilogy", canvas of exclusively humane interplay of reconciliation's, changes and departures are painted. Grass commands knowledge of Polish and German things. Be it geography, local idioms, smell of the country sides. Descriptions of farmers market, streets and places, details of the appearance of mushroom (Boletus edulis), even description of soil is vivid. For a reader who, in his past, lived in Gdansk and knows first hand conditions of life in Poland, this book is a nostalgic trip into memories, source of reflections. There is this poetic melancholy in accepting changing world : ideals replaced with organised greed; Families decaying and destroyed; Brick wall coming down, walls between people building; Lakes desacrated by developments, their waters no more holding crawfish. Author is a keen judge of new world. He ackowledges manipulative genius of a great leader, and shallow pettiness of small; he regrets indiscriminate killings and impersonal wars of present.; he see ingrained prejudices (Polish vitriolic russophobia, German xenophobia) even in otherwise good people. Mellow and enchanting account of fast changing world. - For better ?

It's an interesting book... if you know Gdansk or Poland. It is interesting because in this book Grass goes beyond his usual calls for Polish-German reconciliation. He suggests -- in no uncertain terms -- that if Poles want the Germans to accept the Polish authority over Gdansk, they themselves have to accept Lithuanian authority over Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which belonged to Poland for a number of years between the two world wars. Making this observation is very important given that we, Polish people, usually see ourselves as victims of history and rarely as culprits.

One of the main qualities of the story is that it creates a very detailed picture of the very near future of Gdansk -- a future in which a park near the Gdansk Polytechnic gets converted into a German cementary, where certain German-Polish-Lithuanian reconciliation efforts are under way. Reading all the detailed descriptions of all the things Grass sees changing in Gdansk convinces me of his good knowledge of the city. The drawback of it is that the book is heavily time-stamped and probably not that interesting to those who do not know Gdansk or, at least, Poland.

The writing was nice (though of course in translation) and the eye for detail and dialogue are both top notch. My ability to "connect" with this book, however, was not so good. Maybe that's my fault (ok, it is my fault), but I'm sure that others in America will have the same trouble. I can understand Nobel consideration just on his ability, but I'd have to read more than just this one (all I've read) to say I agree with the award. I just don't know anything about Poland or Germany. I'm sure that many others don't either. If you don't, you can still enjoy the writing, but that's probably where it will end, since the whole book will end up feeling very foreign. For me it was a distraction. If you want to read some Grass, I would recommend starting with something else...I wish I had. Overall, just average, I'm glad I read it, but I had higher expectations than it was able to meet.