A review by laurenleyendolibros
Tante Eva, by Paula Bomer

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

ARC from NetGalley and Soho Press

I requested this book as I recognised the author as one I had read before, but actually, though I have read a collection of her stories, I think I was confusing her with the author of a different collection. 

Tante Eva is about an older woman, the titular Eva, who has lived most of her life in East Berlin and is now adjusting to life in what is now just east Berlin after the fall of the Wall. The main storyline is that her American niece is coming to visit – hence this ‘Tante’ of the title. 

I didn’t enjoy this book for two reasons. First, it’s just boring. I suppose there’s a critique of Germany in there but not knowing much about the time I couldn’t decipher most of it. Eva is a rather naïve woman who laments the rise in crime in her area since the fall of the Berlin wall but is reluctant to ‘westernise’. However, as for story, not much happens and it moves along slowly until the end, when it seems things are coming to a head but simply finishes and in my opinion absolutely everything is left at loose ends. 

The other reason I didn’t enjoy this book (and perhaps missed some information too) was that the author seems to assume we readers are fluent in German. Now, it’s normal in most books that are set in foreign countries or are translated into English to have a few foreign words to remind the reader of their foreign setting and lend some exoticness – think a ‘danke’ or ‘bitte’ at the end of a phrase. That was not the case here. Whole chunks of dialogue were in German and rarely was a paraphrased explanation given. It was too much, and it was alienating. I found myself skipping the German and not even attempting to decipher it after a while. 

So, I’m not sure what the author’s intent was with this book and it wasn’t for me. Perhaps another reader, one who reads German, will enjoy this more. 

Thank you NetGalley and Soho Press.