Reviews

• What a book!

  Finally, I have read this book which has spent several years on my mental reading list. I took the plunge after my daughter's college recommended it as pre reading before she goes off to study German. I think it does give a fascinating insight into ordinary German life before, during and immediately after WW2. It concerns the life of one Oskar Matzerath who at the age of 3 after a (deliberate?) fall in the cellar in his father's grocery store stops growing and stays at 3ft tall throughout most of the book. Through the book we witness the build up of Nazism, the Second World War and the post war reconstruction. Some of it is horrific but observed with such a light touch that the horror is not immediately apparent. Oskar plays a child's tin drum throughout the book. He is evidently very proficient and successful at it. I do wonder whether it is a kind of metaphor for something. There is an obsession with death in the book. It is interesting that one of the post war jobs that Oskar has is the engraving of graveyard monuments and I saw a parallel with the central character of John Irving's book A Prayer for Owen Meaney, one of my favourite books. A bit of internet research indicated that The Tin Drum was very influential on Irving. Both characters are stunted in their growth and have a kind of worldly wisdom. They also share the same initials. The book is also very amusing and also multi-layered. I am sure I will have to read it again. Highly recommended.

• OMG .. WHAT A BOOK - CERTAINLY A GREAT BOOK

  I had the everyman hard bound copy, which contained too small a print. RALPH MANHEIM'S TRANSLATION is truly great. It is an extremely difficult task to review this book, because the author has not followed just one theme, but has dealt with several themes, and to my my astonishment, successfully. Rather than putting the book in any specific type of category , I would tell the characteristics of this book- 1. First and foremost, this book cannot be read at a fast pace, you can only enjoy and understand it if you read it slowly, because you will need to read and re-read sentences and sometimes paragraph. 2. This book is not about Hitler or WW II [as mistakenly believed], rather the book is about the society itself. It tries to picture the disgusting nakedness which has become imbibed as a natural characteristic of almost all the societies, it is about fractured morality of people at large, which contains mere rhetoric and no substance. 3. The entire book does not go in one flow, rather here and there the flow changes, it breaks and it resurrects, and it is surprisingly good, because change of flow is tough task. 4. The book is too witty [again- you have to read it at slow pace], the way words, phrases, and sentences are arranged, it would leave you with sarcastic fun; sometimes you would laugh aloud. 5. Religious people may find some parts of this book as inappropriate [remarks about Jesus Christ]. 6. His writing style [pardon me for not using better terminology] is so different and experimental than I have not read anything like it ever before; even here and there he follows different writing styles. 7. Read the last ten pages very very carefully, because they contain the soul of this book and perhaps the soul of society. The soul is [mind you I am telling you a great secret p-;-) ]- There is no evil except the one inside us

• brilliant

  This is a great book,if not the greatest of the post war written ones. This is not a happy ending kind of story. This is magic realism in its full blown beauty. Just read the "faith,hope, love" chapter to realize that Gunter Grass is not your ordinary writer. He is a master of words. This is the story of Oscar "the three-year-old whom no one could persuade to grow". He stopped growing on his own "in order to be exempted from the big and little catechism and in order not, once grown to five-foot-eight adulthood, to be driven by this man [Matzerath] who face to face with his shaving mirror called himself my father, into a business, the grocery business, which as Matzerath saw it, would, when Oskar turned twenty-one, become his grownup world. To avoid playing the cash register I clung to my drum and from my third birthday on refused to grow by so much as a finger's breadth. I remained the precocious three-year-old, towered over by grownups but superior to all grownups, who refused to measure his shadow with theirs, who was complete both inside and outside, while they, to the very brink of the grave, were condemned to worry their heads about "development," who had only to confirm what they were compelled to gain by hard and often painful experience, and who had no need to change his shoe and trouser size year after year just to prove that something was growing." This quoted paragraph summarizes the logic behind Oskar's resistance to grow. He was ,as you will see through the story,compared to Jesus. He was different and had certain magical powers in his childhood. Nevertheless;at the end, he despises even the slight idea to be like Jesus "If Jesus had had a hump,they would never have nailed him to the cross. Must I really, just because I am thirty years of age,go out into the world and gather disciples around me?". Germany was humiliated,raped,severely wounded and was left with no pride after the war. Grass was its Messiah, he was Oskar himself. Oscar didn't want to grow. he did bad things; he committed what later considered crimes( the death of mom,his two fathers, his lover etc), he tried to convict himself to be the murderer of sister Dorothea, he didn't want to leave prison(or the mental ward). He was deformed not physically but mentally and emotionally like any other German who lived in that troubled era. You wonder at the end of the story; is Oskar a good or bad character? do you sympathize with him, is he a victim or result, is he a human or phantom, is he Jesus or Judah, Hamlet or Yorick. Rasputin or Goethe? I don't know the exact answer to this but I think that he is a mix of all those conflicting contrasts; "What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age of three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter's trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this day my thirtieth birthday and still afraid of the Black Witch." This is a great novel of psychoanalysis. It is not an easy read, it is rich in symbolism and magic. It would be really unfair to rate this lower than 5 stars. Many might criticize the book either because they didn't understand the ideas or because Grass is considered in their limited views "just a political hypocrite". I tell you only one thing;if you are a good reader and appreciate the work of contemporary artist;then you won't regret reading this.

• Amazing Read!

  I've never read a fiction novel quite like this. It has overtones of Ulysses, Huck Finn and Dickens. Characterizations are all fantastic and fleshed out amid the tragedies and tribulations shared by Oskar, his relations, friends and tormentors. Near genius writing by Gunter Grass and his efforts in writing this book earned him a Pulitzer. A fascinating mind trip through the eyes of a unique protagonist who is both defiant but brilliant in his navigation through his brutal world.

• Excellent buy

  Fantastic book

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