Jahrestage in Reading 1001

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Jahrestage

Uwe Johnson

Start date: January 1, 2022

Finish date: December 31, 2022

Discussion: Past annual reads

Why we're reading this: Read as yearly read 2022. Translated copy. Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl
[close] Read as yearly read 2022. Translated copy. Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl

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Past annual reads

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What Members Thought

Dec 13, 2022 Kristel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-challenge, german-literature, historical-fiction, 1001-books, coming-of-age, germany, communisim

Reason read: yearly read for Reading 1001 2022.
Uwe Johnson, German Author, Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamie艅 Pomorski, Poland). His father was a peasant of Swedish descent from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pomerania. In 1945 the family fled to Anklam in West Pomerania and in 1946 his father died in a Soviet internment camp. Due to his failure to show support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the university on 17 June 1953, but he was later Reason read: yearly read for Reading 1001 2022.
Uwe Johnson, German Author, Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamie艅 Pomorski, Poland). His father was a peasant of Swedish descent from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pomerania. In 1945 the family fled to Anklam in West Pomerania and in 1946 his father died in a Soviet internment camp. Due to his failure to show support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the university on 17 June 1953, but he was later reinstated. He came to the US in 1961. I think I read some where that he lived at the address that he gave Gesine.
Book original title is Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl, 2018 translation by Damion Searls.
The book is written as a diary with a submission for every day of the year from August 1967 to 1968 which includes a leap year, also has a prelude and an appendix. The book does not remind you of a diary but more of a journal and free floating with some confusion as to who is actually talking but it has to all be Gesine because it is her diary. Gesine was born about the time of Hitler coming to power. She endured the war, the soviet occupation, communism and getting herself to the US, finding work, raising her daughter as a single mother. The actual time period finds them in the use for 6 years and the daughter is 10 and Gesine has decided to tell the story of her own childhood and coming of age. So the book is a coming of age story of a German girl and also a historical novel encompassing the past but also the present including; the Vietnam war, Che Guevara, racial violence, elections and assassinations. It also covers the Prague Spring;a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dub膷ek was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KS膶).
Liked: it wasn't hard to read but it also was not compelling. The decision to read a section every day helped to keep me reading and ultimately finish. It was a panoramic view of history.
Disliked: it was often confusing and hard to know who was speaking, even though it had to be Gesine. And the point was often lost or unclear. Perhaps because it was history through Gesine's eyes and the NYT it was unreliable? It also has or shares a lot of details with the author's life.
Rating 3.4 stars ...more

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Apr 02, 2021 Karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-chunky-book-challenge, 1001

How to explain a very long book?

Johnson's Anniversaries is about a year in the life of Gesine Cresspahl, as the title suggests, but it is so much more than that.

Gesine was born in 1933 Mecklenburg, Germany, which is Northeastern Germany, near the Baltic, and became Eastern Germany during the Soviet Occupation.

The book switches back and forth (sometimes from paragraph to paragraph), between New York City and Germany. The New York City portions are linear between August 21, 1967 - August 20, 1968 ...more

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