Customer Reviews

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was drawn to this book because of the editorial reviews proclaiming it to be a "modern fairy tale" and that it would "make the Brothers Grimm jealous." I minored in folklore in college, so those topics were right up my alley. Now, I know that the Brothers Grimm are pretty dark, especially the original versions of their tales. But I guess I'd blocked that out or I thought this book would be toned down in the same way that modern versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales are toned down. So I was surprised with just how dark and sinister the tales were in this novel, and many tales are presented through the device of the book's narrator, Pia, going to an older citizen of the town, Herr Schiller, to hear "stories about the town's history" which are really folktales ala the Brothers Grimm (just to be clear, these are *not* the Brothers Grimm folktales but rather folktales in the same vein).

As one can gather from the title of the book, early on a girl by the name of Katharina Linden "vanishes" which leads Pia to wonder if something supernatural happened to Katharina like the things that happen in the stories Herr Schiller tells. Combining the dark stories of witches and demons exacting revenge on townspeople in the days of yore with the very real terror that the parents in the present day town were feeling, scared their child might be next, was quite effective. I tend to read before I go to sleep at night, and when I got to the end of this novel around midnight last night (I couldn't put it down until I finished), the prospect of going straight to sleep was ridiculous. I had to get out of bed, go downstairs and watch a sitcom for half an hour before sleep seemed possible.

It was definitely a good book, and for anyone who likes books that get under your skin and spook you, you can't go wrong with this one. I'd also consider it to be one of those rare books that both adults and children can enjoy, perhaps equally, although I would be hesitant letting a very young child read it. I'd say for ages 12 and up.

"My life might have been different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded."

- The Vanishing of Katharina Linden


Fairy tales, despite their intent, are not very well suited to children. Sending a tot off to sleep with images of witches throwing children into an oven, to make them the centerpiece of her dining room table, aren't really conducive to a good night's sleep.

And by good night's sleep I mean not waking up screaming in terror.

Helen Grant builds the framework of her delightful first novel around fairy tales, or rather local legends, surrounding the town of Bad Münstereifel, Germany. After the loss of her paternal grandmother to spontaneous combustion, young Pia Kolvenbach develops an image problem. Previously a happy girl with an adequate number of friends, after the unfortunate demise of her grandmother the local children do what children do best: they ostracize her to the point of complete misery.

Only a boy known as "StinkStefan" befriends her. Though it's essentially social suicide to hang out with Stefan, Pia doesn't have a whole lot of choice. Soon the two become friends, hanging out together and regularly visiting a charming elderly man, Herr Schiller, who regaled them with wild tales just frightening enough to be interesting.

The one person in Bad Münstereifel who wasn't fond of Herr Schiller was Herr Düster, the local eccentric who was everything Herr Schiller wasn't. Unfriendly and unkempt, he was universally reviled in the village. A virtual recluse, he spent most of his time hiding away in his tumble-down house, across the street from Herr Schiller.

Soon something horrible began happening in this normally quiet and uneventful village, something that eclipsed even Pia's grandmother's unusual death. Young girls in the village began disappearing, the first being Katharina Linden, who disappeared during "Karneval," a time when all the villagers dressed in costume. Pia's last memory of the girl was seeing her dressed as Snow White, standing beside the fountain:

"When she vanished, it almost seemed like something from a fairy tale, as though she were one of Grimms' twelve dancing princesses, who somehow got out of a locked bedroom every night and came home in the morning with their shoes worn to flinders. But Katharina never came home at all."

As girl after girl disappeared, Pia's English mother vehemently insisted the family move to England and away from the danger. Her father refused, his job and livelihood keeping him in Germany. Pia began retreating to the welcoming warmth of Herr Schiller's, Stefan in tow, to get away from the building tension in her house. Hearing the old man's stories of mysterious happenings, the children's minds turned to the possibility of solving the crime themselves, becoming heroes in the process.

As more girls disappeared, the tension in the town grew. Neighbors became suspicious of each other, paranoia and fear turning the once quiet village into a place filled with mistrust. And the more frequent the kidnappings, the more Pia's parents flew at each other's throats. The village, and Pia's family, was falling apart. And the worst was yet to come.

Grant's writing style is polished, her ability to create diverse characters well-refined. Such assured prose in a first novel is an impressive achievement.

The downside is I was a bit confused for what audience the book was written. Adult readers who also enjoy young adult fiction would probably find it a worthwhile read. But younger teens (the ages of the main characters), for whom the plot would also be appropriately thrilling, would need to be mature enough to handle the occasional f-bombs that seem to explode out of nowhere. While not a prude by any stretch, the casual use of extreme swears would keep me from handing the book to my own 13 year old son. And my older teens - 15 and 16 - would probably be bored by the subject matter and characters younger than themselves, with whom they can't as easily relate.

So, who does that leave? Adults like myself who enjoy twists on the fairy tale, fantasy mixed with thrilling components: readers who enjoyed Harry Potter, the Hunger Games series, as well as Tunnels. A somewhat limited reading audience, maybe, but Helen Grant's prose is so well written I'm looking forward to her next book, The Glass Demon, due out next year.

My final verdict is The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a smart page turner, a good effort at translating the fairy tale into a modern setting. While still a bit iffy as to its audience, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Young girls are mysteriously vanishing in a small German town. Ten year old Pia and her friend Stephen try to solve the mystery and they find out that similar disappearances have occurred before. While the police look only to physical evidence Pia finds herself entwined with the local storyteller to see if the answers she seeks to the disappearances lean more towards the supernatural.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden was an interesting novel and probably the first I have read that was set in a semi (1998) modern day Germany. I liked the small-town atmospheric details that the author gave us. The characters were all fairly interesting-Especially Herr Schiller.I didn't really find the main character of Pia very engrossing though. She seemed a little dull and I found myself favoring her friend StinkSteffan more.

I also found the ending of the story to have wrapped itself up a little too cleanly and in such an obvious way that I actually KNEW what was going to happen before it did. I just wasn't really surprised or shocked at all with any of the events that unfolded throughout the book. I did like the author's descriptions and felt that the story could have really taken off for me if the main character was a little more vivacious or vivid. She just fell flat for me and that caused the bulk of the story to drag for me.

Overall, it was an OK book though. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.

How can you resist a book whose opening sentence is, "My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded"? As it turns out, the "explosion" is only the first in a series of bizarre events that make up this witty, entertaining mystery story. The narrator is a 10-year-old girl living in a small German town where gossip is the liveliest thing happening. This particular 10-year-old is a very perceptive, curious, and clever girl, whose story is appropriate for both young adult and adult readers, and who becomes an outcast among her peers because of her grandmother's strange end. In lonely desperation, she befriends another social pariah, and together they investigate what appear to be serial killings that may have begun decades before. There are clues along the way for the observant reader, but the ending took me completely by surprise.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the author's clever and subtle humor that is sprinkled lavishly throughout. In more than one place, I actually laughed out loud. Irony and wit are used to great effect regarding the foibles of small-town life in general and of small-town German life in particular. There are fair amounts of German references and language throughout, but there's also a glossary of German words and phrases included in the back of the book. The astute reader can pretty much deduce the meaning from the context in any case, but legendary German heroes and villains are also included that an American reader would be unlikely to know. This most definitely does not detract from the story and, in fact, adds an interesting element of information about Germany.

Pia, the narrator, is a charming and very likable heroine, and the other characters are also quite memorable, although not always so likable. For me, Pia's mother was the least sympathetic and least likable character. She is a British transplant and has her grievances about the life she has chosen, but we're never shown any real reasons for her to be so hostile towards everyone and everything. Since we're seeing everything through Pia's eyes, I would have expected the mother to come across at least as somewhat sympathetic, but Pia simply relates her mother's actions and words without justifying any of them, in my opinion. Yes, the mother cares about Pia's safety, but that's pretty much it.

To sum up, I definitely enjoyed this book tremendously and did not put it down for the entire day it took me to read it. It's quite a page turner, and the suspense is kept up throughout and ends with a completely unexpected outcome. Highly recommended for both young adult and adult readers.

Plot Summary: Caught between childhood and adolescence, Pia has had a happy, uneventful upbringing until the fateful Advent holiday when her Grandmother accidentally sets herself on fire, and Pia finds herself the target of gossip and ridicule. Ostracized by everyone except for "StinkStefan," a fellow outcast, Pia turns to kindly, old Herr Schiller for fables about her tiny village, Bad Münstereifel. When one of Pia's classmates is kidnapped, the whole tenor of her community changes, and parents who used to let their children wander at will are suddenly worried and clinging.

I'm not quite sure what to make of "The Vanishing of Katharina Linden." You would think that a story about kidnapping and murder would be too gruesome to hear from a ten-year-old narrator, but Pia's innocence kept it from feeling too heavy to bear. While the parents' of Bad Münstereifel were trying to stifle their panic, the kids viewed the events with morbid fascination, secure in their sense of youthful immortality. To Pia and Stefan it was a mystery to sniff out, not a fate to be avoided. Only children could have seen it this way, because it's too terrifying for an adult who knows better.

Most of the story reads like a slice of life about a modern German village that's mired in its own past. It's quite fascinating, and I think my favorite parts revolved around the customs and traditions that were completely foreign to me. I've never lived in a town so small that strangers are unknown, along with any sense of privacy, and I liked how Helen Grant described it as having "a powerful sense of community, which was sometimes comforting and sometimes stifling." This is illustrated when Pia is ostracized by her entire school, and unlike a large town, there are no new friends to seek out. Once a person's reputation is cemented in a small community it can be like a prison sentence. On the other hand, Pia was fiercely loyal to Bad Münstereifel, which becomes very clear when her English mother starts to lose her tolerance for the place.

"The Vanishing of Katharina Linden" is a curious little story that is a mystery, but not a thriller, childlike, but not immature, and horrific, but not hopeless. It's odd frankness can be summed up in the opening line, "My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded."

I say `finally' and I mean that mainly because this book is really, really good; and part of me was not expecting that. As a member of vine, and an avid reader, I am always looking for `the next best book' and so far my selections have been disappointing. Maybe this stunning debut is a sign (since the three `vine' books sitting on my coffee table look equally impressive) and if it is then I am really giddy with excitement over my reading prospects for the next month or so.

What makes `The Vanishing of Katharina Linden' so marvelous? Simply put; everything!

The novel, toted as some kind of horrific fairy tale, is really more of a creepy murder mystery, and as such it nails the tone and pacing beautifully. Telling the story of a young girl named Pia living in Germany with her `strained' family, `The Vanishing of Katharina Linden' is sure to chill a few bones. Pia is young and impressionable, and as we are told in the opening of the book, she is basically a loner. This is by force, since after her grandmother explodes (sort of) she becomes a social outcast. This leaves her with one friend, Stefan, a kid that no one else likes and she doesn't really want to be around, but she has no choice. It's either Stefan or no one. Soon a young girl named Katharina disappears. She just vanishes without a trace. No one knows what happened to her and soon panic sets it. Pia and Stefan are intrigued and earnestly want to solve the mystery. Then another girl vanishes...and then another, and soon they are uncovering secrets that involve other missing girls from years past and a certain girl, the first to vanish, that seems to tie in everything.

The novel is written beautifully, with a lot of skill and precision that keeps the reader on edge, even when they have started to put the pieces together and figured it all out (I concluded on the killer early on, but that didn't leave the ending any less terrorizing). Some have balked that the novel isn't horrific enough, but honestly it holds so many dramatic flourishes that I cannot complain. Helen Grant marvelously fleshes out Pia to become a very real little girl, someone that we know and understand and want to hear more about. The ending is sheer terror, and that makes up for the seemingly `un-scary' bulk of the book.

I liken the final chapters to the conclusion of the film `The Silence of the Lambs' (which is like a benchmark for me in generated terror). It is effortlessly creepy, heart-bracingly so and it manages to make you lose your breath in moments.

Stunning.

I completely recommend this book to anyone wanting something a little different that delivers sharp storytelling skills, believable character development and the thrills when needed. This is NOT a children's book (how anyone could make that assumption is beyond me) but it is a deftly written book about children.

I was thoroughly enthralled by this inventive coming-of-age novel that is artfuly braided with German folklore. It is literary fiction at its finest -- a unique story told in beautiful and masterful prose. Ten year old Pia is a fascinating protagonist, and her insight and imagination are completely charming. This book is listed as mystery or fantasy, but it doesn't quite fit those catagories, and I think some readers are giving the book poorer reviews than it deserves due to their expectations for those genres. I can't wait for Helen Grant's next book -- THE GLASS DEMON, slated for publication in 2011. Something tells me I have a new author on my list of favorites.

I chose this book because of its use of the words Oma (grandmother), and tante (aunt). I grew up using those titles and had never read a book with them in it. Admittedly, that is not the greatest reason to pick a book, but it had an air of mystery about it as well as a cat on the cover, so I couldn't go too wrong. If I could be more exact, I would probably give the book a 4.7. I loved how the book started and I loved the main character Pia. Another reviewer did not find her so endearing, but I thought she did the best she could with all that happened around her. The book was from her point of view and she had a wry sense of humor at times, as well as a sharp mind. She was not a rude, whiny child, nor was she cruel to others, so I really rooted for her.

The book does not deal with a lighthearted topic, that of children going missing during daytime events, but you don't read the details of it, only what Pia hears about it. With her one friend, Stefan, another outcast child, they become a bit fixated on finding out what happened to the girls and by talking to other elders in the city, their interest in the mystery is fueled.

You get glimpses into Pia's home life, with her English mother and German father not always seeing eye to eye. Pia deals with this, as well as her and Stefan's growing bravery in discovering who took the girls. Some say the ending is predictable, but I thought there were enough curves to make you wonder till the end. In fact, I couldn't put down the book during the last 50 pages because I had to see the mystery solved.

In all, I really enjoyed the book. The setting in a small German town was something different and quaint. Pia and Stefan made a good team and the action/mystery level at the end was pretty intense I thought, especially considering how lighthearted parts of the other book were. Still, if you expect all action and sharp dialogue, you will be disappointed. I liked the glimpses into a slower life there, and the stories of the past that were told. The book is like a tubing trip down a river, the first part is calm and meandering, then the pace picks up and you are bouncing in the waves, hitting walls and spinning around. Enjoy it.

I found this to be a truly enjoyable book; equal parts adventure and suspense, creepy and spooky folklore is woven in through stories told by one of the main characters. While the narrator of the story is the ten year-old Pia, her "voice" is rather adult; the tone of the book can be rather graphic at times and it's a little jarring when she mentions her age and you start wondering if you thought like this when you were ten.

The book starts out on a sort of humorous note and it fools you a bit; this isn't a funny or light story and it grows even more serious as it progresses. I was increasingly engrossed; this is a moody, atmospheric whodunit and I think it's more successful because it's told from the child's perspective. Pia's fears, her reactions to her parents and the other adults in town set the mood perfectly and ratchet up the suspense.

While reading the book, I had the oddest feeling that I was viewing Pia's village and the story as it unfolded in a little enclosed snow globe. It's a very insular community and the kidnappings, Pia and Stefan's investigations and Herr Schiller's storytellings all contributed to the overall effect of almost suspended time. I was very intrigued by the author's entire handling of the concept of the village; I think I could map the village, smell the bakery, find my way around the school and pick the lock on Herr Duuster's cellar door.

I wouldn't call this a modern fairy tale by any stretch of the imagination. It may come close to the Brothers Grimm; some of the tales told by Herr Schiller to Pia and Stefan are creepy and spooky and may not scare today's younger audience, but I think the mention of the folk tales as an audience reference gives a mistaken impression. This isn't a children's book. It may be narrated by a ten year-old and some of the subject matter may be considered readable by what's probably a twelve or thirteen year-old audience, but this story is periodically gory and graphic and will give the best suspense and occasionally horror movies a run for their money. The ending sent me looking for something else to do before I went to bed and I haven't been thirteen years old for many, many years.

Helen Grant is willing to go old school and take the chance to sacrifice a character to full fill a solid storyline.

The pacing of this little mystery wrapped in folklore is so perfect it's impressive - who does that anymore? Most author's either can't help themselves or are so talentless they either rush things a long or drop heavy-handed clues. The voice of Pia is told in the reflective tone of a young woman recalling her past but the ten year old sensibilities are so well in place that the innocence of this child on the trail of a "Child Thief" will keep the chills going. As much as we cheer her on to solve the case we also want her to stay home and bolt the door!

The location of the story in Bad Munstereifel, Germany actually provides a character in itself. The parents being a combination of a British mother and German father also give and interesting contrast to cultures and the requirements of adaptation. Despite the scattering of German words, sayings and references do not fear confusion, a lexicon is provided at the end of the novel for quick reference. This actually hikes up the books international appeal.

A simple story, but the nuances and events will stick with you long after you pass this on, because yes - You will be telling your friends they MUST read this! I am already eagerly awaiting Ms. Grant's next novel: The Glass Demon.

Well Done!