This was a gut-wrencher. I totally enjoy books that cause me to think about issues or reflect on myself, books that teach me to look inside and outside myself. But this was a toughy. The book is ostensibly about a small town in Germany during the rise of Hitler, but what it's really about is a woman struggling to understand who her family really is and what she's all about. Oh, and someone dies.
Uh-oh.
I think I've just found the first problem with an online, one-sided book club. You may not have read this book, and you might want to read it in future. So you don't know who dies. And I shouldn't tell you. Crap.
Ok, I'm going to dance around it, but you'll probably figure out who it is if you read this very carefully. So if you want to read the book and don't want a plot spoiler, stop now.
So anyway, Children and Fire is part of Ursula Hegi's Burgdorf Cycle, four books about this little town and its people. The first, and in my opinion best, is Stones from the River. All the books in the cycle contain some of the same characters, but focus on different people or different years. One thing I find interesting is that none of the characters are particularly lovable. They're just all very real. Which is one way that Hegi is a phenomenal writer. She teaches writing in a masters program in New York, and I think being her student would be both inspiring and intimidating. Because another thing she does very well in her writing is weave these incredibly rich and complicated tapestries of stories that seem to be about one thing but really are about so much more.
For example, the title. There are children in this book, and there are fires. The main character, Thekla, is a teacher, so it would make sense that the children would be her students, which they are. The foreground plot takes place all within one day in her classroom. But the story also loops back to Thekla's childhood memories of her family, so she and her brothers are the children in the title as well. The omniscient narrator tells us more about Thekla's childhood than she knows, such as the fact that her dad is not her biological father. There are a few stories of "illegitimate" children in the book (including Hitler's own father), and as we read Thekla's thoughts on them we know that she has the same background, but she doesn't know it. Meanwhile, she tries to take care of all the children in her class by pretending to agree with the Nazi regimes and encouraging the boys to join the Hitler Youth program, but she can't protect them, and even in the time before open persecution of Jews, the implications of the regime create a horrible situation for the children.
As for fires, the main fire is the burning of the German parliament building, which happened a year before the main story takes place, and there is also the burning of the books, which happens a few months before. We also see fire in the eyes of the children Thekla teaches as they, like she, decide who they are going to be in the face of the rise of Nazism. The depth and intricacy of plot and characters and motifs is amazing.
I do like to learn about history through the books I read, as I said about the last book, and there was much to learn about pre-World War II Germany and Hitler. I had to look some things up on Wikipedia, and as I did I was a little afraid to type "Hitler's childhood" into the search engine. Even though I think (hope?) I have nothing to fear from doing a simple search, I know my feelings were probably affected by the fear that all the people in C and F feel because of changes in their country. We know that the Jewish people in the story, and those who stand up for them, have a great deal to fear, but it's also clear that those who are acting against them are doing so out of fear. They are afraid of the poor economy and losing power and even of their own neighbors, who propoganda says are the enemy. This also reminded me of our country today, and though I don't want to talk about politics, I know that the economy and state of our nation make many people fearful.
Of course, the teacher as a central character and the way the government is interfering in the education system again made me look inside and out as I read. I have lots of conversations with people who ask me about the state of our education system, and like most everyone else I have concerns but few solutions. I see similarities to our schools in Thekla's complaints that she has to focus only on what the government dictates, and isn't supposed to take the boys on field trips or do projects. This is another reason this book was hard for me to read--the reflecting on myself as a teacher and our schools was a little heavy for August reading. Yet the characters who present it and make it real were too fascinating to walk away from. I really wanted to find out with Thekla about her family background, and the small mysteries that surround her life. They are connected to the bigger picture but they make it almost less important than just people's regular lives.
Ultimately, I think that's what it's all about. Individuals are the real story and what really matters. Government, economy, education... do they determine what happens to people or do people determine what happens to them? Hegi is using all the characters, plot, and history to help us ask ourselves some questions: "Who would I be in the face of the most difficult circumstances? How far would I let immorality go before speaking up? How do I make the world how it think it should be?" Heavy.
