Customer Reviews

Children and Fire

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is my first experience with this author and it was incredible. She paints pictures with her words, one brush stroke at a time. Concisely and clearly, she reveals the conflict and the shocking resolution, which - as a reader, you know that shortly after this day World War II will begin.

The book is many stories twisting together and introducing different characters. The main protagonist is Thekla, a German teacher who has finally secured a position in a Catholic school. The day is in 1934. Thekla is teaching the boys in her class through example, first hand experience, and redirecting their attention so the children will not tell on each other or turn in their own parents for not being patriotic.

Thekla's day progresses while we flash on her memories, her ideas, and her made-up conversation with Sonja Siderova, the converted Christian from Jewish teacher who was put on administrative leave once her Jewishness was uncovered.

The book flashes a lot on different times which is not confusing. There are actually 2 distinct times that alternate. The book starts with Thekla teaching her boys then flashes back to 1899 when Thekla was but an illegitimate fetus in her mother's womb at a Catholic home for unwed girls. It is here that we come to understand her mother, her father, and her biological father who plays a part in Thekla's upbringing without her knowing his true role.

Foreshadowing is beautifully weaved through the pages as the reader understands that the burning of the Reichstag, one year earlier, is only the beginning of the many fires. The most moving is a quote by Heinrich Heine: "That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

The book is beautifully written, drawing upon symbolism while Thekla grapples with her stance. She believes she can continue to sit on the fence. She can believe what she chooses and enjoy her moral standing while enforcing the new laws of the land that continue to constrict the freedoms of individuals. Thekla eventually discovers that those who get too close to the fire, will get burned. Even the fence sitters.

Ursula Hegi's novel, Stones From the River, is one of the outstanding novels I have read in many years. Children of Fire is another amazing work that creates a sense of time and place that is astounding. The characters are exceptionally and finely drawn, the author bringing them to life in a way that the reader may truly embrace them. Of course, it is beautifully written as Hegi has a style that is poetic and deeply moving. She thoughtfully enters an era of fear, hope, doubt, and mistrust, exploring issues that are both historical in nature and yet contemporary in their repercussions. At times this is a chilling and dark novel, but it ultimately is uplifting and enlightening. It is certainly worthy of the discerning reader's attention, who will surely find it a wonderful reading experience that they will suggest to others. Ursula Hegi is a very special author of exceptional talents.

A truly beautiful novel, wonderfully written and a story that is superbly realized. This author captures moments in time like an artist with a canvas and brings characters to life in a way so rich that it is difficult to describe. The atmosphere of the period is incredibly created and makes for a novel that one will find difficult to ever forget. Like the first work of Ms. Hegi's I ever read, Stones From the River, it moved me deeply with the very human themes explored and people that seem to reach from the page to touch you with their reality. I simply can not recommend this novel enough to anyone who appreciates fine literature and wants to understand what the era and people depicted were like.

I found myself holding my breath, anticipating the possibilities in the next chapters. Thekla's observations of her students, and her hopes and fears for them felt true. As the political situation toughened I agonized as she faced increasingly slippery choices. Ursula Hegi's beautiful, mesmerizing writing once again caught me in its spell.

This is my first experience with Ursula Hegi. She has delicately and creatively intertwined events of different time periods for the villagers of Burgdorf Germany in one day, February 27, 1934. This day is the anchor for the story and is centered in Thekla's classroom. The novel portrays the villager's daily events throughout generations. February 27th is the one year anniversary of the burning of the Reichstag. Hitler is consolidating his power, Jewish children are being segregated in schools, Thekla has replaced her childhood Jewish teacher and mentor, many Jews are leaving and most of the boys in Thekla's classroom belong to the Hitler Youth. Beautifully written, intricately woven through time this novel attempts to show us how propaganda can influence a nation and justify murder, racial segregation and the dehumanization of a group.

I may be one of the few who read this without having read any of her previous books (altho Stones has been on my mental to-read list since before Oprah named it one of her recommendations), but there it was on the New Books shelf of our little library...

Do we need another book about how ordinary Germans were swept up by Nazi hysteria (or chose to be, rather than get swept away)? Maybe not, but this was well done, and seemed to capture the feelings of ordinary people. Of course, there is much more to this work, and in fact, it seems unusual for being too brief rather than too bloated. The core, the protagonist's passion for her students in the midst of figuring out who she was and how she could let her moral compass waver, was excellently told. Other parts seemed to be left hanging incomplete. E.g. the boyfriend played such a minor role he could have been left out. OTOH, his somewhat outspoken disgust for the Nazis could have been made into a bigger story, as could any number of other characters, and could have fit the theme. And after playing such a big role in the early flashback, Thekla's Muti seemed to fade away. Her Vater's story of actually fading away, wasn't really dealt with in depth, except to say toward the end he was another (PTSD like) casualty of WWI, when one wonders if it was the seeming takeover of Muti and Thekla by the biological dad's family. We never learned his inner life, which could have been interesting. And the younger (half)brothers could have been major foils, instead of minor ones from childhood...

The ending was a little lame; really, could a bright woman like Thekla not have figured it all out long before?

Oh well, these are my speculations. What the author presents is worth savoring, and unlike others, I didn't find the flashbacks too disruptive, nor the interspersing of Thekla's inner thoughts within the present narrative.

What can I say? I love Ursula Hegi. Trudi Montag is STILL one of my favorite characters ever. Ursula writes with such passion, that you become completely enveloped in her storytelling. This book was no different, although at the end, it left me feeling bereft. I am wondering if the meaning just went over my head.

I was really with the story, until the end. I don't understand it all, but it was a good book, none the less.

In the beginning of Hiltler's reign, they obviously couldn't go against it. No freedom. That is something to chew on. What you can or can't read, what you say do, everything being monitored. Hegi has left lots for me to think about.. Now that is a sign of another good book!

How wonderful that Hegi lets her readers return to the place and characters she created over a decade earlier. Hegi's latest book brings us back to the town along the Rhine, Burgdorf, and the believable characters who inhabited it in Floating in My Mother's Palm and Stones from the River This time, the action centers on 1934, long before Kristallnacht and the invasion of Poland. Disbelief, complicity, enthusiasm, outrage -- the townspeople greet Hitler's edicts and antics with diverse reactions, but missing the signs that foretell the grim future.

One of the many pleasures of the book is Hegi's description of the main character's passion for and theory of teaching. Thekla has waited for ten years to gain a teaching position. Her relationship with her students, a class of ten-year-old boys in the Catholic school, is complicated and all-consuming. She is a gifted teacher but Hegi also shows us that Thekla is not as selfless and reflective as she believes herself to be. As readers, we mark Thekla's foibles and know more about her past (and probable future) than she herself understands, yet we still can love her.

The denouement is strongly foreshadowed but that matters little; we already know the fate of the characters in history. Hegi knows we readers are wiser than most of Burgdorf's innocent (and not-so-innocent) residents. Instead, she widens our own understanding of that time of shadows. Reading "Children and Fire" has made me want to return to the two earlier books and read them with new eyes.

"Children and Fire" is the first Ursula Hegi novel I've read. I'm not sure how I've missed her marvelous writing so far, but I'm quickly making up for it by reading her back list. "Children" is the fourth novel in her series set in Burgdorf, Germany. I think all take place in the first half of the 20th century and are set in a quintessential German village. A village which is home to a primarily German Christian population, but with a few German Jewish families as long time residents. The book, which is set basically on one day, February 27, 1934, with flashbacks to earlier times and is the story of Thekla Jansen, a new teacher in the Christian-only school in Burgdorf. She has taken the place, teaching a class of 10 year old boys, of her former mentor, who had been fired for her Jewish ancestry. Thekla feels a shame in taking over the class under such circumstances, but she is quickly embraced by her young students.

1934 in Germany was a time when Germans were getting used to the realities of living in the Nazi state. Anti-Jewish laws were coming on the books, and many German Jews had seen the future and left Germany for more accepting climes. For the German Christians life under the Third Reich already included book burnings and mandatory Hitler-Youth membership for students. In Thekla's class of 10 year olds, some boys were excited about joining the Hitler-Youth, while others, with parents who were not quite as caught up in the Nazi thrall, were less anxious to join. Young Bruno, a student in her class, longs to join the Hitler Youth, but is prevented in doing so by his parents.

And then there is the question of parentage and family history as Germans are filling out their family trees to attest to their Ayran backgrounds. There's some "question" about Thekla's own background, something she's managed to avoid dealing with up to now.

That one day - February 27, 1934 - was an important day in Burgdorf, Germany. It was a day when the future clashed with the present and "inconvenient" facts had to be accepted as truths. Ursula Hegi manages to make it all work. She's a brilliant writer.

"... but suddenly she didn't know if it was possible to defer moral courage..."

In her new novel, "Children and Fire", Ursula Hegi tells the story of Thekla Jansen, a teacher in the fictional German village of Burgdorf, familiar to readers of the author's previous novels. Taking for the most part the perspective of her heroine, Hegi explores, from the inside out so to say, the emotional confusion and moral dilemmas that Germans were confronting with the Nazis' rise to power. The author sets the stage effectively, and while alluding to pivotal historical events, she focuses her attention on one specific day in February 1934.

Thekla, privately critical of the regime's new politics, wavers when it comes to sharing her views. Most of questioning is realized through her almost continuous inner monologue: "How much must I try to find out? Once you know, it's tricky to keep the knowing at bay, to press it back into the before-knowing[...][O]r can I decide to be satisfied with not knowing beyond what we are told?". She knows, for example, that she was given her teaching position only because her own former teacher and admired mentor, Fräulein Siderova, was fired because she is Jewish. Yet, Thekla refuses to dwell on any "reason" and instead, and only in her mind, justifies herself to the older teacher: she accepted the position "temporarily" until... Until when? "It can't last. Once the regime wears itself down, I'll get back to my own moral compass, to who I was before."

Hegi effectively illustrates Thekla's dilemma and ambivalence by taking the reader into the centre of her day's activities: the classroom. She loves teaching and her interaction with "her boys" is vividly rendered. Seeing the majority of them enthusiastically showing off the brown shirts of the "Hitler Jugend", she wonders how she can guide the children on a path of tolerance and open-mindedness while at the same time accepting or even promoting their participation in a youth movement that preaches the opposite? She only wants what is best for them, she convinces herself. She is also very conscious of the effectiveness of the early Nazi propaganda exerted on the minds of the young, well exemplified by some boys' behaviour. "Appalling, how much her boys expose about their families in all innocence. She would never turn them in, Still, others might."

The young teacher's indecision and willingness to conform may be rooted also in her background. Born as an illegitimate child to a teenage mother and adopted, her childhood was divided between poverty at home and privilege offered by the wealthy Michel Abramowitz. Resented by her siblings and Michel's children and their mother, she learned early on how to manoeuvre everything to her advantage. Despite persistent rumours that link her parentage to Michel, Thekla appears to be oblivious to or deliberately suppressing the truth of her mixed heritage. How long can she pretend ignorance and go along with the increasingly vicious Nazi propaganda? How long can she be torn between being "repulsed" by the propaganda and "being sucked into the swirl of song and of fire, into the emotions of the mass, that passion and urgency, that longing for something beyond them, something great..." ?

Eventually, external events may force Thekla to confront who she really is: "What happens if you're no longer who you believed you were? What do you do with the knowledge of that? And what if who you're becoming goes against that you believed about yourself until you won't remember who you were before?"

"Children and Fire" can be read at different levels. First and foremost it is the touching story of one young woman during the 1930s in Germany and her struggle to get ahead in life while hoping to stay true to her "moral centre". At a deeper level, Hegi uses Thekla to ask complex questions of moral integrity and personal courage that more than one generation in Germany was confronted with at the time. It may also have relevance for other crisis situations. For me the overall question remains whether a novel today, more than 75 years after the events, can deliver new aspects and insights that have not been addressed until now in the many books, fiction and non-fiction, written since, including Hegi's own earlier novel Stones from the River. Readers will have different reactions to this question and, also, to the relevance of the novel in this regard. Hegi's book is engaging and very well written; she addresses successfully the range of moral questions that "ordinary people" might have grappled with at the time. For me the novel's weaknesses are more on a structural level and have to do with balance between different strands of narrative, the prominence of the inner monologue over other ways of conveying the depth and drama of the story, and the ending which left me less than satisfied. Some factual details seem somewhat improbable to me, but these are minor in the overall picture. [Friederike Knabe]