Review by Booklist Review
In her introduction to Kempowski's outstanding final novel, All for Nothing (2018), contemporary German novelist Jenny Erpenbeck observed how Kempowski repeatedly used material from his own life. For example, An Ordinary Youth, first published in Germany in 1971, is set in Rostock, where in 1948 Kempowski, his mother, and his brother were arrested on charges of espionage and sentenced to 25 years in prison. (He and his brother served 8 years, their mother 6.) But the plot here is far more ordinary, despite the extraordinary context: it is 1945 and Walter, the teenage protagonist, is an undistinguished student, athlete, and member of the Hitler Youth. His loving family talks and Walter absorbs the culture of his time, which translator Lipkin brings to life by contextualizing the numerous snatches of song, ad copy, and idioms woven into the texture of these "ordinary" lives. (To grasp the difficulty of this, imagine trying to explain internet memes to people who have never seen a smartphone.) Told through one family's story, this is an effective portrait of bourgeois complicity.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This distinctive autobiographical novel from Kempowski (1929--2007; Marrow and Bone), first published in 1971 and translated into English for the first time by Lipkin, remains his best-known work in his native Germany. In early-1940s Rostock, the Kempowskis are an upper-middle-class shipping family supporting the war effort despite their distaste for Nazism. Walter, the youngest, plays with toy soldiers and learns to love jazz from his wayward older brother, Robert, who fails at school and skips Hitler Youth meetings to go to the movies. Over the course of a few years, the family is pulled apart--Walter's father goes off to the front, reliving his WWI glory days in Flanders, where he was stationed; Robert becomes a driver for the army; and their sister marries a Dane in Copenhagen. Walter is left at home with his mother, a wonderfully realized character who's anxious, ridiculous, and courageous all at once. Lipkin's masterly translation successfully renders the family's quirky routines and made-up expressions like "That's Goodmannsdörfer" and "That's Badmannsdörfer," combining regular adjectives with random words from Rostock. The result is a distinctive portrait of a pivotal time. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A German boy comes of age in the midst of World War II. That Kempowski's latest novel to appear in English is based on his own boyhood does not come as a huge surprise--for one thing, his hero shares a name with his author. Walter is 9 when the book begins and 15 when the novel--and the war--come to an end. Through Walter's often oblivious gaze, the reader experiences things from a middle-class German perspective--an often uncomfortable vantage point. Though Walter's father, who eventually serves as an officer in the army, insists that "I'm conservative to my bones, but that doesn't make me a Nazi," he's loyal to the government, and statements like, "Old Hitler has a good head on his shoulders" are not unusual for him. These ironies are presented without comment or explanation. Kempowski favors short, swift vignettes that proceed rapidly, without much background information to clutter the scenes. Family members appear without introduction, for example. That method gives the book a sense of immediacy and modernity that makes it seem as if the events are still taking place. It also lends a sharp irony to many of the darker moments. When a Danish friend, for example, is released from Gestapo prison--a trumped-up charge to begin with--he comes over to tell the Kempowskis about his experience. "I wouldn't be able to stand more than three hours in prison…It's beyond me," Walter's mother says. The Danish friend, Sörensen, responds, "What do you think a human being can withstand, Frau Kempowski?" The scene ends there. Still, over the long term--the book approaches 400 pages--these vignettes, which are packed full of parentheticals containing song lyrics, party slogans, and the like, grow somewhat tiresome. One yearns for an honest, straightforward reckoning with the war. And though the book provides a great deal of wisdom and even emotional depth, it doesn't provide that. A German bestseller when it was first published, Kempowski's novel is smart, troubling, and witty--but ultimately imperfect. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
