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dchau's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderful story of friendship in Leipzig, Germany when the Berlin Wall had fallen. Plenty of drinking (pretty much in every scene!), drugs, and raging adolescent hormones. It was confusing at first, but the book is not in chronological order, skipping back and forth, with tragedy and hope intermixed.
mstormer's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
ellies_shelf's review against another edition
5.0
A fascinating look at the collapse of the DDR through the lens of a single narrator's dream-like reminiscences. Daniel Lenz, from East Leipzig, looks back over the years immediately before and immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The novel begins (in Katy Derbyshire's translation):
There's this nursery rhyme I know. I hum it to myself when everything starts going crazy in my head. I think we used to sing it when we hopped about on chalk squares, but maybe I thought it up myself or dreamed it. Sometimes I mouth it silently, sometimes I just start humming it and don't even notice because the memories are dancing in my head, no, not just any memories, the ones of the time after the Wall fell, the years we - made contact?
It's made up of vignettes organised non-chronologically; adjacent memories do sometimes have a sort of dream-association between them - for example, the same one of Daniel's friends might be a main character in a series of vignettes. We get the sense that Daniel is haunted by his teenage memories, populated by his friends and indifferent or downtrodden adults, and is trying in some way to work through a kind of survivor's guilt - not only do all the systems he's accustomed to collapse pretty rapidly around him, but his friends are picked off through one thing or another as the novel progresses.
In the earlier memories, the young people's behaviour is governed by the expectations of the Pioneers, a scout-like organisation for schoolchildren in the DDR. Once the systems of the DDR are removed, there is nothing to replace them; the teenage boys (Daniel, Rico, Paul, Mark, Walter & Stefan) are left to literally play in the ruins. They have no real role models, being surrounded by the violence of 'skins' (neo-Nazi gangs) and offered no protection from adults who are mostly portrayed as drunk or violent or preoccupied with the good old days. There is a hopelessness to the cycle Daniel is stuck in - as much as he often doesn't want to get involved with violence or drugs or other criminal activity, he is drawn in through his loyalty to his friends (although not always - one scene sees Daniel hiding on a balcony as he watches his friends get beaten up).
There are many occasions where Daniel would like to remember something different that happened - kissing a girl, rescuing his friend from a car crash - almost as a repentance for choices that he made. But as readers we see the impossible situation he and his friends are stuck in and Daniel's frustration (increasingly clear in the later vignettes) at the inability of their dreams to get them out of it.
I've thought about the criticisms of this book - that it's too dark, too male-focused, too heavy on violence and objectification of women. But I think it's worthwhile to remember that these characters are, for the majority of the novel, just children - and at the end of the novel Meyer brings us very effectively back to the time of their innocence and shows how they got sucked into the dark side of the society around them. Overall a very real and affecting read.
There's this nursery rhyme I know. I hum it to myself when everything starts going crazy in my head. I think we used to sing it when we hopped about on chalk squares, but maybe I thought it up myself or dreamed it. Sometimes I mouth it silently, sometimes I just start humming it and don't even notice because the memories are dancing in my head, no, not just any memories, the ones of the time after the Wall fell, the years we - made contact?
It's made up of vignettes organised non-chronologically; adjacent memories do sometimes have a sort of dream-association between them - for example, the same one of Daniel's friends might be a main character in a series of vignettes. We get the sense that Daniel is haunted by his teenage memories, populated by his friends and indifferent or downtrodden adults, and is trying in some way to work through a kind of survivor's guilt - not only do all the systems he's accustomed to collapse pretty rapidly around him, but his friends are picked off through one thing or another as the novel progresses.
In the earlier memories, the young people's behaviour is governed by the expectations of the Pioneers, a scout-like organisation for schoolchildren in the DDR. Once the systems of the DDR are removed, there is nothing to replace them; the teenage boys (Daniel, Rico, Paul, Mark, Walter & Stefan) are left to literally play in the ruins. They have no real role models, being surrounded by the violence of 'skins' (neo-Nazi gangs) and offered no protection from adults who are mostly portrayed as drunk or violent or preoccupied with the good old days. There is a hopelessness to the cycle Daniel is stuck in - as much as he often doesn't want to get involved with violence or drugs or other criminal activity, he is drawn in through his loyalty to his friends (although not always - one scene sees Daniel hiding on a balcony as he watches his friends get beaten up).
There are many occasions where Daniel would like to remember something different that happened - kissing a girl, rescuing his friend from a car crash - almost as a repentance for choices that he made. But as readers we see the impossible situation he and his friends are stuck in and Daniel's frustration (increasingly clear in the later vignettes) at the inability of their dreams to get them out of it.
I've thought about the criticisms of this book - that it's too dark, too male-focused, too heavy on violence and objectification of women. But I think it's worthwhile to remember that these characters are, for the majority of the novel, just children - and at the end of the novel Meyer brings us very effectively back to the time of their innocence and shows how they got sucked into the dark side of the society around them. Overall a very real and affecting read.
_alyosha_'s review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
youpie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
annrhub's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
aurouge's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
naddie_reads's review against another edition
2.75
"While We Were Dreaming" is a coming-of-age historical fiction that will either work for you or won't. Sadly I fell into the latter group. Told in a non-linear narrative, this novel portrays the hardships of Daniel and his group of friends had to go through following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The uncertainties and lack of opportunities of the time brought about social discontent and trouble for the boys, especially when drinks and drugs are brought into the mix.
While the narrative does well enough in highlighting the social issues arising due to the circumstances described above, the read can get quickly tiring with the almost repetitive narrative and constant sexualizing talks of women between the boys and the other men they encounter -- yes, we get it, it's supposed to reflect real life and it's a sad indictment of the fact that these men objectify women constantly within their groups when 'socializing' with one another, but I've had enough of the narrative after the first 300 pages or so. If this were shortened considerably I probably would've rated it higher. As it is, though, I'd rather read a non-fiction about the lives of these people post-fall of the Berlin Wall (Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall does a good job of that if you're looking for an example).
While the narrative does well enough in highlighting the social issues arising due to the circumstances described above, the read can get quickly tiring with the almost repetitive narrative and constant sexualizing talks of women between the boys and the other men they encounter -- yes, we get it, it's supposed to reflect real life and it's a sad indictment of the fact that these men objectify women constantly within their groups when 'socializing' with one another, but I've had enough of the narrative after the first 300 pages or so. If this were shortened considerably I probably would've rated it higher. As it is, though, I'd rather read a non-fiction about the lives of these people post-fall of the Berlin Wall (Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall does a good job of that if you're looking for an example).
sharkybookshelf's review against another edition
3.0
As the Berlin Wall comes down, Daniel and his friends are young teenagers roaming the rough streets of their Leipzig neighbourhood, dreaming of increasingly unrealistic futures for themselves…
Objectively, this book is written incredibly well - the continual violence, drinking, drugs, destruction of property and attempts to pick up and derogatory comments about women build up a rich portrait of these teenagers, the never-ending cycle of violence, the lack of options growing up in their particular neighbourhood and the limits placed on their aspirations. The repetition of it all is the point, of course, and none of it feels gratuitous - it’s all depressingly believable and feels realistic for the characters - but reading it over and over ad nauseam rapidly turned into rather a slog.
To the point where, if it hadn’t been a buddy read, I’d have considered DNFing. Although I couldn’t see how the story would wrap up, it does come together very well with final details of the boys’ individual trajectories poignantly slotting into place. But…at almost 600 pages, it is not a short book and I cannot honestly say that the payoff of the last 75 or so pages is worth the long slog to get there.
The book’s blurb suggests a coming-of-age story as the Berlin Wall comes down, and it was in the end, but not as I expected and more by omission - the Wall is barely mentioned and the GDR’s collapse hardly seems to register with the boys, beyond a change in the football leagues and an amusing encounter with a microwave (also an exodus of teachers, but they’re not particularly fussed by that). It’s a story of those overlooked and left behind by reunification, the flipside of the success story of modern Germany.
I appreciate what Meyer was doing with this raw story of hope and despair and those left behind in the reunification of Germany, and I am glad to have read it, but gosh it was painful to get through.
struwos's review
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Violence, Drug abuse, and Alcohol
Moderate: Car accident, Sexism, and Vomit