The Granddaughter
Translated into clear and accessible English by Charlotte Collins ... Rather schematic ... This novel, finally too pleasing and affirming for readers who are rightly worried about political violence and radicalized youth, ends with a dignified old man envisioning a stable, cosmopolitan future for a wayward young girl. Some will read Schlink’s latest as an inspiring fable of intergenerational unity and redemption. Others might find it more like fantasy fiction.
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The narrative’s twists and turns will likely keep readers immersed, even if parts of the novel seem divorced from reality. The Granddaughter is less effective as fiction than as a meditation on wrestling with the dark complexities of 20th-century German history and its aftermath.
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The alchemy so successful in The Reader — using two individuals to represent two different generations — doesn’t quite work this time. Kaspar and Sigrun, and Birgit and Svenja, too, never emerge as full personalities. The gears of the plot often grind.
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