Peachy Reads

Most people were introduced to the fictional Rhine River village of Burgdorf with Ursula Hegi’s critically acclaimed 1994 novel Stones from the River . The author’s latest visit to pre-World War II Burgdorf is her most recent novel Children and Fire . Thekla is offered a job teaching an all-boy class when the Jewish teacher is asked to step down. The awkwardness of the situation is compounded by the fact the Thekla was a favorite student of Fräulein Siderova. Throughout the novel the story of Thekla’s birth and upbringing is revealed in flashbacks, while the events of 1934 happen over a single day, a day that marks the one year anniversary of the burning of the Reichstag. A family secret is fully revealed by the end of the novel, a secret that puts Thekla’s future in Nazi-controlled Germany in question. The novel deftly handles issues of complicity in the Nazi regime, mutual responsibility, and human compassion. I thought the flashbacks were more compelling and were more completely dev...

The latest sensation in the seemingly unending Swedish crime-thriller juggernaut comes in the form of Lars Kepler, a pseudonym for a husband-wife writing team (the new Sjöwall and Wahlöö?). Their debut novel is called The Hypnotist , a nearly 500-page roller-coaster ride that never stops delivering the thrills. When a doctor is asked to hypnotize a crime victim to find out information about the perpetrator, his revelations cause all hell to break loose. There is violence aplenty within the pages of this book (it makes me shudder to look at the cover image) and there are a couple criminal monsters who seem to have been created in the same mold as Hannibal Lecter, so this book is definitely not for the faint of heart. In spite of some instances of unexpected switches of narrator, the story flows quite well and there is a good sense of place— most notably Stockholm around Christmas time with lots of glögg , saffron buns, and advent stars in windows. I like the character of finlandssvensk ...