KÄSEBIER TAKES BERLIN

Name: KÄSEBIER TAKES BERLIN
Author: Gabriele Tergit
ISBN: 978-1-68137-272-3

by Gabriele Tergit ; translated by Sophie Duvernoy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22, 2019

Tergit’s novel deserves a place alongside Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé, and other key works of the...

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A star is born, Weimar-style, in this German novel originally published in 1931.

Käsebier—his name combining the German words for beer and cheese—is a, well, cheesy sort of lounge singer in beery little clubs along the Kurfürstendamm. He sings a few lieder, makes a few marks that are worth less and less in the spiraling inflation of Berlin at the dawn of the Depression era. All that changes when a columnist writes an approving piece in a local paper, which sets wheels in motion: Soon other papers are noticing him, with one left-wing journal hailing Käsebier as a “fundamentally German talent…a sort of combined court minstrel and popular poet, an extraordinary union of natural musicality and popular humor,” while a right-wing tabloid thunders, “Repugnant foreign Jews, plagued with hundreds of oversophisticated strands of thought, abuse the German language to praise a socialist who is debasing our people’s greatest treasure, the folk song, and misusing it for its own vain ambitions.” Tergit (1894-1982), herself a German Jew and journalist specializing in courtroom cases, turns an unsparingly satirical eye on the press and culture of the Weimar era, and especially on the machinery that surrounds popular culture, from adoring writers and cynical publishers to the mucky-muck capitalists who combine to erect a would-be empire around Käsebier—at first trifles like rubber dolls, shoes, and cigarettes (“Käsebier melior for 5 pennies, Käsebier bonus for 3, Käsebier optimus 8 pennies”) but then an opera house surrounded by a fashionable housing and shopping complex. It’s not long before the fad passes and fortunes fail, and in the end the blameless Käsebier finds himself singing for his supper out near the Polish frontier even as Berliners are starting to work words like "Sieg” into everyday speech and to realize that, as one character shrewdly observes, “if the election results in a minority for the grand coalition, our only option will be dictatorship.”

Tergit’s novel deserves a place alongside Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé, and other key works of the period.

Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-68137-272-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: New York Review Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
EFFINGERS
by Gabriele Tergit ; translated by Sophie Duvernoy

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.