Floating in My Mother's Palm (Paperback)

by Ursula Hegi (Author) "When my mother entered her tenth month of carrying me, I stopped moving inside her womb..." (more)
Key Phrases: baby mansion, quarry hole, bakery truck, Trudi Montag, Frau Brocker, Anton Immers (more...)

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: 192 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction Ed edition (July 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684854759
• ISBN-13: 978-0684854755
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #130,055 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 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

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.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

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

By A Customer

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.

15 of 16 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

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.