#Dammit in german full#

Y’all, I really did read this book until the pages nearly fell out.

Who doesn’t love a book set in WW2? No one, that’s who! This one’s also one of my favorite subgenres, a Home Front book. Basically, they suck big ones, is what I’m saying. Her mother’s a total princess who can’t imagine how she managed to give birth to a weird tomboy from her own body, and her dad’s a total, raging asshole with a chip the size of Arkansas on his shoulder. This should probably be an anti-bonus factor, because Patty’s parents are THAT BAD, but here you go.

#Dammit in german full#

Something about it being a pimento cheese jar really sets the scene, and the book is full of little details like that - places where one word or image would work just fine, but Greene finds just the exact right one to make it perfect.īonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenthood I just love that bit about the pimento cheese jar - not a jam jar or even a pickle jar. Ruth carried in steaming plates of wienies and beans and some cut-up tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes from our Victory Garden. In the center of the square, breakfast-room table a bunch of back-yard roses lounged in a flowered glass that had once held pimento cheese. I give it a pass for being 40 years old, with the overdone dialect and character tropes, and because it really is beautifully written in places. Talky Talk:Southern as Fried Chicken on SundaysĪnd by that I mean it reads a bit like a mashup of Flannery O’Conner (‘specially Member of the Wedding) and Harper Lee, and pretty accurately depicts dusty, slow, small-town Southern reality circa 1942, but it also is a bit of a cliche. She’s so lonely and needy, and he’s so sweet and definitely not predatory, and it just broke my heart. I’m giving it a 4 anyway, partly because of my 11-year-old self and partly because Greene captures the longing of a schoolgirl crush on an older guy so perfectly, including Patty’s total unawareness of the whole situation and Anton’s feelings. He loves her, sure, but not in a romantic way. I remember swooning my PANTS off when I read this at 11, so I was really wigged out as the scenes with Patty and Anton approached, but then I was SO RELIEVED. Wait, before you wig out and start screaming about how Patty’s only 12 and Anton is 22 and that’s totally gross and icky and illegal, hear me out. I’m not ACTUALLY accusing you of copycatting, just noting the similarities, which also crop up in Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees and many other Southern-white-girl-black-maid/mother-figure novels. **Please don’t sue me for libel, Katherine Stockett. *It seems like Katherine Stockett totally cribbed this book when she wrote The Help.** She’s definitely a bit of a poor-me sadsack, but damn, the girl has a right to be. Her grandparents are pretty awesome*, but not around enough to be truly kickass, and no one else cares what Patty does or thinks, except to criticize it. The girl has had it ROUGH, and except for Magical Negro Ruth, the housekeeper, she has no one to look out for her. I’m taking a page from Jenny’s book and calling myself Patty’s Auntie Mame rather than her BFF. When a German POW from the new camp outside her small town escapes, and she makes the daring move to hide him, she risks what little she has in order to gain so much more.

She’s contrary, and tomboyish and just a bit weird. She’s not lonely so much because she’s Jewish, but because she’s not all sweetness and light like her little sister, or boy crazy like the other girls her age. Patty Bergen is in for a long, hot, dusty, lonely Arkansas summer. I was SO PROUD of that poster, y’all, so I totes love this cover. This cover is the exact one on the paperback I read to pieces in sixth grade, and the one on the library copy I got last week! I totally spent HOURS painstakingly copying the three faces on this cover for my book report poster, along with a gold signet ring. Here we present our version of Facebook-stalking that high school crush with the old school book report. It burns brightly in our memories as a pivotal book, something for which we racked up overdue library fines and stayed up late reading and rereading after many years apart, we decide to revisit to see how the years have treated the story we treasure (spoiler alert: not always very well).

Note: Every now and then, we get the urge to revisit an old flame. Sixth-Grade Me Relationship Status: ObsessionĢ0-Year High School Reunion Relationship Status: Still Hot After All These Years Talky Talk: Southern as Fried Chicken on Sundaysīonus Factors: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenthood, WW2