Floating in My Mother's Palm [Paperback]

Ursula Hegi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 1998

Floating in My Mother's Palm is the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novel Stones from the River. Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets Hanna see her hometown from a dwarf's extraordinary point of view. Although Ursula Hegi wrote Floating in My Mother's Palm first, it can be read as a sequel to Stones from the River.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This impeccably crafted, intensely moving novel, whose narrator is a young girl in post-WW II Germany, confirms Hegi ( Intrusions ) as an exceptionally talented writer. In short chapters that glow with the luminosity of Impressionist paintings, Hegi illuminates Hanna Malter's family and the other inhabitants of a small town on the Rhein.stet sp Her mother, a painter, is a risk-taker who has lost her faith in organized religion but teaches Hanna to have confidence in the powers of nature; her father is a kindly dentist who enjoys the security of an orderly life. Other village residents--a dwarf who is the town gossip, the illegitimate son of an American soldier, an architect whose dreams of death come true in a bizarre fashion, a teenager impregnated by her grandfather--are seemingly ordinary people whose quiet existences mask their sadness or desperation. While she obliquely exposes their secret lives, Hanna also reveals herself as a typical adolescent, whose rashly candid tongue sometimes wounds her friends. Some of the parables are a little too neat, but in general these finely tuned, interlocked vignettes convey both the essence of childhood and the spiritual emptiness of a community unwilling to confront the implications of the recent war. Building in power, the novel offers transcendent moments that affirm the need for some sort of faith to add meaning to our lives.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This novel of a girlhood in a small German town in the Fifties memorably recalls a time and place and people. Hitler is not mentioned at school. The unspoken and unspeakable extend from the past to the postwar present in a series of intimate vignettes and tales about the townspeople--family secrets and tragedies, accidents, suicides, murders, incest, and grotesqueries told with the spellbinding grace and beauty of old ballads and a touch of the Brothers Grimm. Young Hanna's reckless mother is an artist both fascinated and confined by the town. Daring to swim during a thunderstorm, she initiates her daughter into a fierce and joyous love of life as they dance together in the water. The moment confers a healing benediction on Hanna's sometimes painful and mysterious rite of passage. An exceptional work, recommended for most fiction collections.
- Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction ed edition (July 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684854759
• ISBN-13: 978-0684854755
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #104,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Companion to Stones from the River, February 20, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Floating in My Mother's Palm (Paperback)

The question here is which book to you read first the prequel - "Stones from the River" or "Floating in My Mother's Palm"? I read SFTR first and found this a little less in depth, while at the same time continuing on the lives of the characters introduced one generation earlier as viewed from the post WWII generation. This book answers several questions I had regarding the seemingly meandering ending for SFTR, and now helps it all make sense. I suppose if I had read this, I would have given "Stones" 5 stars instead of 4 stars. Some of the stories are ordinary while others are extremely touching. All loosely connect to each other.

Any way you do it, don't read one of these two books without reading the other.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delectable slice of provincial life, March 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Floating in My Mother's Palm (Paperback)

If Ursula Hegi's "Floating In My Mother's Palm" doesn't read like a novel, it's because it is a collection of loosely but seamlessly connected short stories which offer the reader a delectable taste of provincial life in post-war Germany. The unifying factor is Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in the small town of Burgdorf amidst a seemingly large and disparate cast of characters who in one way or another shape her childhood experiences. These stories tell of idiosyncracies, deformities, illegimacy, masochism, incest, dark premonitions, murder, suicide, madness, magic and healing, but in the most gentle, lyrical and dream like way possible, ie a million miles away from the cheap sensationalism common to purveyors of pulp fiction. Each story is complete in itself and without exception, beautifully told. Readers of this wonderful collection of vignettes is going to have his own personal favourites. Therein lies the fun - it's like choosing from a box of chocolates. There is a pervading sense of sadness in these tales which spring from the religious limitations and provincial-mindedness of a society on the fringe, but you're never conscious of it until it's over and you get the chance to reflect on it. Hegi's talent and integrity as a writer is self evident in the way she has achieved the near impossible, that of transforming characters with the makings of a grotesque into believable human beings. The result is a poetic and strangely uplifting novel that is a joy to read. Highly recommended.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it before "Stones From The River", November 1, 1998

By 

Fizyka Pomaga (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Floating in My Mother's Palm (Paperback)

I loved this book of small town characters described by a young girl growing up in Germany in the 50-ies. Hegi writes here the way Fellini made movies, her choice of words is stunning. I read this book before reading "Stones from the River". "Stones" gave me explanations for the mysteries in "Floating". These mysteries make "Floating" the book it is, this is how young Hanna sees the people around her. "Stones" describes the previous 40 or so years, and if you read it first, "Floating" won't be mysterious, it will be just short evolution of characters from before, and you won't be able to identify with Hanna, because you'll know too much. So if you have a choice, read "Floating" first.