The Reader Travels

Following the little people back to the Rhine, I find myself in Germany during World War II, picking Stones from the River. Trudi is a bitter dwarf with a good heart, and through her eyes, we can see what it must have been like to live under the fear of Hitler.

Since my heart doesn’t bleed, I was a little annoyed by Trudi and her sappy-ass story. Woe is Trudi. She’s short and stubby and her ma is loony and she can’t get laid and she’s living in troubled times and she can’t grow no matter how many times she hangs by her fingernails from the door frame. Poor, poor Trudi.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a great read, and I loved the picture it painted of a happy, little town turned into a land of paranoia and violence. I just found myself sighing in exasperation at how pathetic she was sometimes.

She’s kinda like Holden Caulfield. If you read Catcher in the Rye, try to count the number of times Holden says, “And then I got more depressed.” Trudi’s story has a whole lot more adventure, but see if you can count her woes. She’s a friggin’ drama queen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Continental Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.