winterdoll_reads's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
wwatts1734's review against another edition
5.0
I have always been a fan of Erich Maria Remarque's novel "All Quiet on the Western Front", which I consider to be one of the best war novels ever written. So, when I saw "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" at a used book store, I was excited to read it. I had hoped that "A Time" would live up to the high standards of "All Quiet". I was not disappointed.
"A Time" is arguably an even better novel than "All Quiet". Set in World War II, it is the story of Ernst Grueber, a soldier in the German Army on the Russian Front who, after two years of constant combat, is suddenly granted a three week leave. He goes home, excited to put the devastation and privation of war behind him and enjoy the luxuries of home. But when he gets to his hometown, he finds the same blown up buildings, the same human misery, the same piles of bodies that he saw in Russia and Africa and France and other places where he had served with the Wehrmacht. The Nazis had brought the horrors of war to so many other countries since 1939. Now, the allies had taken to bombing the town, and the bombing raids brought the horror of war home to Germany. But even worse than the bombing raids, the Nazi party had turned neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother, until nobody could speak openly about anything. It seems that the Nazis destroyed Germany once, and the allies destroyed the country a second time.
Ernst returns home to find his family home destroyed and his family missing. While he's in town he runs into Elizabeth, a young woman whom he had known in school but had never given a thought to before. Elizabeth lost her father because a Nazi had denounced him, and her father was sent to the concentration camp. So here are two disillusioned young people who have lost their families and wonder what it is all about. Why should the German people continue to suffer for the Nazis. Why can't the war end?
Remarque is an amazing author who brings the awful reality of war home to the reader. His prose is very vivid, and his characters are likeable. He captures the silly banter of soldiers while also describing the horrors that soldiers have to live with every day. He reminds us that wars are not about ideologies or patriotism or even about national interests. They are about soldiers, human beings who long to end the suffering and return to civilian life. German soldiers hated the Nazis as much as the Allied soldiers did, perhaps even more so because they saw the Nazis who were naked opportunists who denounced their fellow citizens in order to improve their standing with the party. But like all men of honor, they fought for their country and were willing to lay down their lives for the fatherland.
This is an amazing novel, and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially to anyone who is interested in the Second World War.
"A Time" is arguably an even better novel than "All Quiet". Set in World War II, it is the story of Ernst Grueber, a soldier in the German Army on the Russian Front who, after two years of constant combat, is suddenly granted a three week leave. He goes home, excited to put the devastation and privation of war behind him and enjoy the luxuries of home. But when he gets to his hometown, he finds the same blown up buildings, the same human misery, the same piles of bodies that he saw in Russia and Africa and France and other places where he had served with the Wehrmacht. The Nazis had brought the horrors of war to so many other countries since 1939. Now, the allies had taken to bombing the town, and the bombing raids brought the horror of war home to Germany. But even worse than the bombing raids, the Nazi party had turned neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother, until nobody could speak openly about anything. It seems that the Nazis destroyed Germany once, and the allies destroyed the country a second time.
Ernst returns home to find his family home destroyed and his family missing. While he's in town he runs into Elizabeth, a young woman whom he had known in school but had never given a thought to before. Elizabeth lost her father because a Nazi had denounced him, and her father was sent to the concentration camp. So here are two disillusioned young people who have lost their families and wonder what it is all about. Why should the German people continue to suffer for the Nazis. Why can't the war end?
Remarque is an amazing author who brings the awful reality of war home to the reader. His prose is very vivid, and his characters are likeable. He captures the silly banter of soldiers while also describing the horrors that soldiers have to live with every day. He reminds us that wars are not about ideologies or patriotism or even about national interests. They are about soldiers, human beings who long to end the suffering and return to civilian life. German soldiers hated the Nazis as much as the Allied soldiers did, perhaps even more so because they saw the Nazis who were naked opportunists who denounced their fellow citizens in order to improve their standing with the party. But like all men of honor, they fought for their country and were willing to lay down their lives for the fatherland.
This is an amazing novel, and I highly recommend it to everyone, especially to anyone who is interested in the Second World War.
jarichan's review against another edition
3.0
Es ist schwer, den Zweiten Weltkrieg aus der Sicht der Deutschen zu schildern. Zumindest ohne Pathos, Verherrlichungen und Schuldzuweisungen. Remarque schafft es. Kein Wunder, bei seiner Geschichte. Wenn man sich also mit der deutschen Sicht beschäftigen möchte, gehört Remarque zuoberst auf die Leseliste.
Ernst ist auf Urlaub zurück in der Heimat und erkennt diese kaum wieder. Er muss erkennen, dass Tod und Zerstörung nicht nur auf dem Schlachtfeld stattfinden, sondern auch zu Hause. Und dass dort kaum mehr etwas so ist, wie er es in Erinnerung hat.
Es ist eine erschütternde Sicht auf die Auswirkungen von Krieg auf die Menschen. Mehr und mehr fallen Ernsts Hoffnungen auf eine Rückkehr in die Heimat in sich zusammen. Remarque schildert diesen Zerfall eindrücklich und nachvollziehbar. Man merkt erneut, dass er weiss, wovon er schreibt.
Dieses Buch ist ein Schrei nach Frieden, nach Gerechtigkeit, nach Ruhe und Sanftmut. Ernst bekommt nicht viel davon, aber ein wenig. Wie viel hat Remarque erhalten? Der Autor gibt auch den gerne verteufelten Deutschen ein menschliches Gesicht. Manche wurden Nazis, viele wollten aber einfach nur (über-)leben.
Doch wie geht das in einer Zeit des Sterbens? Wie kann man leben, wenn überall gestorben wird?
Ernst ist auf Urlaub zurück in der Heimat und erkennt diese kaum wieder. Er muss erkennen, dass Tod und Zerstörung nicht nur auf dem Schlachtfeld stattfinden, sondern auch zu Hause. Und dass dort kaum mehr etwas so ist, wie er es in Erinnerung hat.
Es ist eine erschütternde Sicht auf die Auswirkungen von Krieg auf die Menschen. Mehr und mehr fallen Ernsts Hoffnungen auf eine Rückkehr in die Heimat in sich zusammen. Remarque schildert diesen Zerfall eindrücklich und nachvollziehbar. Man merkt erneut, dass er weiss, wovon er schreibt.
Dieses Buch ist ein Schrei nach Frieden, nach Gerechtigkeit, nach Ruhe und Sanftmut. Ernst bekommt nicht viel davon, aber ein wenig. Wie viel hat Remarque erhalten? Der Autor gibt auch den gerne verteufelten Deutschen ein menschliches Gesicht. Manche wurden Nazis, viele wollten aber einfach nur (über-)leben.
Doch wie geht das in einer Zeit des Sterbens? Wie kann man leben, wenn überall gestorben wird?
_sila_'s review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
mfgrth3792's review
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
sonia_reppe's review against another edition
5.0
Why is this not as popular as All Quiet on the Western Front? Like All Quiet, it's about a young German soldier in WWII, but this one has a great love story and was three times more pleasurable for me. *note* Don't read this if you're a recovering alcoholic because on every page, someone is drinking something.
update: Oops, I mean WWI.
update: Oops, I mean WWI.
oinarii's review against another edition
5.0
This was the last book I read before the war came to my home. At the time of the reading I was always thinking: about how people could possibly not see the devastation, pain, and despair the war brings. It strikes you to your core and takes everything away from you. You become a ghost on the pages of history and suddenly realise that millions were lost before you: deprived of light and a chance to live in a world where you expect the Sun to rise each morning until God decides it's time for you to go at last. At war, there are other human goods, who decided to become them, who forgot that they will die one day as well for death doesn't differentiate between the king and the slave.
This book for me is the reason why everyone should read Remarque. Not his «Three comrades» or his «The Arc of Triumph» (though two are undoubtedly masterpieces), but this particular work. It's dark as dark can be. It's bitter. It's horrendous in its honesty about life and human destiny. On the pages of this book, Remarque shows the nature of a human being: its desire to live and the inevitability of its death. Just like the Bible excerpt it was based on it preaches to us about the cost of human life and our time on Earth and that this time is very limited. Just like Gustav, we go never having finished all we wanted to do, and just like him we regret a lot of things. It teaches us how far human ideas can take a person - to what depths of hell.
The symbolism in this book is something otherworldly. Death is just another character along with Elisabeth or Gustav or many others. It looks at you from the premises of ruined houses or through the shattered glass of broken windows, you breathe in its smell from the pit dug by partisans and which becomes their hast eternal home, you took it in the eyes through the frozen eyes of dead soldiers who fought for nothing and died for nothing in foreign hands. But there is also love, there's life - in a blooming tree under which two lovers can take cover from the whole world; in an old forgotten cafe with the apple garden where one can dream of a life they were deprived of.
Life is not an enemy of death.
They are but our beginning and end.
A never-ending circle of our existence.
This book for me is the reason why everyone should read Remarque. Not his «Three comrades» or his «The Arc of Triumph» (though two are undoubtedly masterpieces), but this particular work. It's dark as dark can be. It's bitter. It's horrendous in its honesty about life and human destiny. On the pages of this book, Remarque shows the nature of a human being: its desire to live and the inevitability of its death. Just like the Bible excerpt it was based on it preaches to us about the cost of human life and our time on Earth and that this time is very limited. Just like Gustav, we go never having finished all we wanted to do, and just like him we regret a lot of things. It teaches us how far human ideas can take a person - to what depths of hell.
The symbolism in this book is something otherworldly. Death is just another character along with Elisabeth or Gustav or many others. It looks at you from the premises of ruined houses or through the shattered glass of broken windows, you breathe in its smell from the pit dug by partisans and which becomes their hast eternal home, you took it in the eyes through the frozen eyes of dead soldiers who fought for nothing and died for nothing in foreign hands. But there is also love, there's life - in a blooming tree under which two lovers can take cover from the whole world; in an old forgotten cafe with the apple garden where one can dream of a life they were deprived of.
Life is not an enemy of death.
They are but our beginning and end.
A never-ending circle of our existence.
berlinase's review against another edition
3.0
solid work of Remarque. His stories are generally one of a kind and it gets boring the more you read. BUT! you have his descriptions, wich gives you the shivers every time they appear. theres a lot of dialogue wich sometimes isn't really necessary for the story plot and lets the characters seem more grounded. but when Remarque lets his words flow, mostly at the end of each chapter, you can simply melt away.
always you have a feeling of a troublesome time, somewhere between the two world wars or even in the middle of one, like ATtLaaTtD or AQotWF. you can feel the young characters being torn apart by war, without a youth, without parents or friends, surrounded by death, at home or on the front.
Similar to AQotWF, A Time to Love and a Time to Die surrounds manly one young male in his early twenties, who's on the eastern front, fighting against the Russian armies.
But Remarque lays the focus on his 'vacation', where he's supposed to flee death and killing but is rather finding himself in a massive wave of air strikings in his home city.
in search for his parents, whose house has been bombed, the young Gräber is looking for something to hold on to. A person, a friend he might know.
He finds the young Elisabeth, who he knew before.
Don't want to spoil to much but you get the sense. What can you do in your short vacation from the front? well live would be the answer. I guess.
always you have a feeling of a troublesome time, somewhere between the two world wars or even in the middle of one, like ATtLaaTtD or AQotWF. you can feel the young characters being torn apart by war, without a youth, without parents or friends, surrounded by death, at home or on the front.
Similar to AQotWF, A Time to Love and a Time to Die surrounds manly one young male in his early twenties, who's on the eastern front, fighting against the Russian armies.
But Remarque lays the focus on his 'vacation', where he's supposed to flee death and killing but is rather finding himself in a massive wave of air strikings in his home city.
in search for his parents, whose house has been bombed, the young Gräber is looking for something to hold on to. A person, a friend he might know.
He finds the young Elisabeth, who he knew before.
Don't want to spoil to much but you get the sense. What can you do in your short vacation from the front? well live would be the answer. I guess.