Children and Fire / Ursula Hegi

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 developed than the scenes from 1934, which seemed more stream of consciousness and a bit disjointed. There is a lot of German language in the novel and while most of it is glossed immediately in English (which gives the impression of repetition for those who understand deutsch) there are some passages which remain untranslated and apparently prove difficult to those who are unfamiliar with German (but I remember suffering the same fate when reading an Hercule Poirot novel in my pre-francophone days). While all of her Burgdorf novels stand alone, there are characters who recurr peripherally, so for the reader it’s a little bit like going home. It's not a perfect book, but it's enjoyable nonetheless, all the more so for Burgdorf aficionados and those who want to understand what life might have been like in small-town Germany in the years leading up to World War II.

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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