A review by kbuchanan
Here in Berlin by Cristina García

3.0

While Garcia's considerable beauty of style is still on display here, I'm not sure that this milieu serves her quite as well as the longer-form novel. Though still deemed a "novel," this work is more like a string of tiny vignettes strung together loosely by the concept that all of these stories are being told to a "visitor" to Berlin. While some of these are lovely little well-constructed jewels, some feel too rushed to ever really develop, and I found myself missing the rich magical realism present in Garcia's other novels. Some of this may also be my own bias, as I feel that the field of literary fiction is so saturated by WWII material that I was hoping for something a bit different from this. Beautiful writing; subject matter I feel like I've seen before.