Review by New York Times Review
A northern german farmhouse groans in the wind, its old, bare timbers "like gray bones." "That's what witches sound like when they're burning," thinks 5-year-old Vera, the refugee at the center of Dörte Hansen's shrewd, timely, completely absorbing debut novel. Readers captivated by the gothic opening of "This House Is Mine" may be surprised to watch this dark bud blossom into a quirky family saga and social satire. Manderley this is not. Vera's mother, Hildegard von Kamcke, fled East Prussia with her at the end of World War II. They find a bed - but not a home - on Ida Eckhoff's ramshackle farm in the Altland. For months, Hildegard disappears nightly to steal milk directly from Ida's cow and to pocket a few apples from her orchard. Eventually Ida makes grudging accommodation for Hildegard (who completes her takeover by marrying Ida's war-damaged son, Karl) and begins to look after Vera. She teaches Vera to read the Low German inscription carved on the house's gable : "This hoose is mine ain and yet no mine ain, he that follows will caw it his." Gruff Ida performs admirably in loco grandparentis. Later, when Hildegard abandons Vera and Karl for a wealthy man and his villa in suburban Hamburg, Karl does equally well for his adoptive child. And she becomes his caretaker, nursing him through his night terrors. Because he can't be left alone for long, Vera moves away only to earn a dental surgery diploma, then returns to care for Karl. "There wasn't a word for what Karl had been," Vera reflects after his death, "not a father, nor a brother, nor a child. Her comrade perhaps. Her fellow man." Vera inherits the sagging, distinguished house that is hers but not hers. She survives among her insular country neighbors by being slightly terrifying - keeping ferocious dogs, for example - but also by not asking or expecting to belong. We recognize the modern, make-do, lateral construction of Vera's family: a reluctant host who gradually assumes a grandmother's role; a stepfather who becomes the sole parent. In the city, having brushed off the dirt of Altland, Hildegard gives birth to another daughter. Raised apart, Vera and her half sister barely know each other. Yet one day, Anne, the half sister's daughter, drives up to the farm with her own child and his pet rabbit in a cage. "Vera Eckhoff didn't know much about her niece," Hansen writes, "but she knew a refugee when she saw one." Hansen's themes - family, home, belonging, alienation - are reiterated in this Vera/Anne doubling, and feel especially poignant given the current refugee crisis in Europe and the backlash against migrants. (This novel was a best seller in Germany.) But even a welcoming hand can't erase a refugee's losses. Hildegard describes her fellow refugees as "drift ice": "homesick wanderers for the rest of their lives. They had marched off as Prussians and arrived as riffraff." The brief, powerful glimpse Hansen allows us into the horrors of Hildegard's flight occurs relatively late in "This House Is Mine." By then, readers will have fallen for the novel's odd charm: not as odd as "The Tin Drum," the ur-text of postwar German exile, but with some arresting tonal shifts. Chapters set in the present day playfully puncture Gen-X mores with jokes about "the organic mob in Hamburg," with their overprotected children and underprotected marriages, who can't tell factory jam from homemade, but who besiege the Altland farmers to grow warty, authentic heirloom fruits and stop spraying their crops. Not much escapes Hansen, a former journalist, and one can only wish for a little more of Vera, perhaps, before she passes on her house to its next steward. ? 'Not a father, nor a brother, nor a child. Her comrade, perhaps. Her fellow man.' REGINA MARLER, the editor of "Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell" is writing a book about Virginia Woolf.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
Hildegard and her five-year-old daughter, Vera, refugees from eastern Prussia, arrive at Ida Eckhoff's farm in the Altes Land region of Germany in 1945. The war may be over, but life on the farm is not exactly peaceful; Ida and Hildegard battle for supremacy, and Ida's son, Karl, comes home from the war a changed man. Hildegard runs off not long after marrying Karl, leaving Vera behind. Years later, more refugees descend on the farm, which Vera, now a dentist, has inherited. Her niece, Anne, has fled from Hamburg, four-year-old son Leon in tow, following the collapse of her relationship with Leon's father. Vera has let the house and orchards fall into disrepair, which grieves her neighbor, Heinrich, an old-schooler who keeps his own place in perfect order and worries over who will carry on the family farming traditions. Meanwhile, city dwellers are snapping up the half-timbered, thatched-roofed farmhouses and playing at what one character calls peasant theater. A best-seller in Germany, Hansen's book melds poignancy and wry humor to explore the meaning of family and home.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hansen's haunting debut novel spans 70 years, from 1945 to the present, presenting a progression of women who carry their histories with them. Vera is a Polish refugee. In the depths of winter, she and her mother, Hildegard, journey across the barren expanse of post-WWII Europe looking for a new home. Their destination is the farm of Ida Eckhoff, where Ida lives with her son, Karl, who was injured in the war. The book switches between Vera adjusting to life in northern Germany, and modern-day Hamburg, where we follow Vera's niece, the recently single Anne Hove, and Anne's son, Leon. In alternating chapters, Hansen slowly reveals the threads that connect these two women. Anne is a single mother and recently jobless, and she decides to retreat with Leon to the family farm, where a much older Vera still lives. That house, and the haunting memories of generations of family, keeps Vera awake at night as it decays around her. Vera never felt at home there but never left; Anne has never lived there but insists on making it home, and she begins to fix the decrepit building. Hansen's passages about the house and its village are fully realized and vivid, allowing for the setting to enhance the characters. Though the narrative is perhaps a bit familiar, Hansen makes this story about the process of healing affecting, real, and memorable. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The "house" of the title is an old, thatched-roof farmhouse in rural Altland, Germany, with an inscription on its front façade that reads, "This house is mine and not mine, he who comes after me will call it his." Alternating a bit roughly between the present and 1945, this story weaves the lives of two strong, independent, sometimes eccentric women who do, indeed, become a family. Anne is a carpenter by trade and a single mother with a young son, and her Aunt Vera, an unmarried dentist, lives in the dilapidated old homestead. As the renovations on the house progress, so does their relationship. Vera and Anne learn to respect, trust, and care for each other as well as young Leon. Stokes's translation is rocky in the beginning but smooths out to make for an enjoyable read. VERDICT In this remarkable debut novel about life and love among mothers, sons, stepfathers, lovers, friends, and neighbors, Hansen carefully examines family relationships while providing amusing contrasts between city and country life. A wonderful, thought-provoking first novel that will work well for book groups.-Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The inhospitable farmhouse of a cranky German dowager becomes home to three generations of unhappy women.Fleeing Prussia in the wake of World War II, having had to leave her baby by the side of the road to freeze, Hildegard von Kamcke arrives with her remaining daughter, Vera, at the farm of Ida Eckhoff and her son, Karl, or at least the cardboard cutout of Karl who returned from battle. Two women and only one stove never bode well, and Hildegards marriage to Karl only makes the tension between the women worse. By the time Vera is 14, Ida has hanged herself in the attic and Hildegard has run off with another man, the father of a half sister who will be named Marlene. In an interwoven storyline set in the present day, Marlenes daughter Annes marriage falls apart. She takes refuge at the farm, where her aunt Vera still lives, though she's knocked off Karl a while back. If this sounds hard to follow, it is. A bunch of minor characters with unimportant roles in the plotif there is onedont help. One enjoyable aspect of the book is its ironic take on the unrequited enthusiasm of urban types for country living. Burkhard Weisswerth, for example, moves out to the area planning to start "A Taste of Country Life, a magazine for people whod had enough, downshifters like himself.A man never forgot the first potato that he took out of the earth with his own handsand, yes, it had humbled him, sensitized him to the wonderful, simple folk out here who lived from the work of their hands. These simple folk, on the other hand, are unimpressed. When Anne enrolls her son in day care, the director is dismayed but not surprised to learn that little Leon is a vegetarian and calls his mother by her first name, and of course the kid shows up with head lice a few weeks later. Hansens debut novel was a surprise bestseller in Germany but will probably find a cooler reception here. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
