Reunion - Fred Uhlman

[goodreads]

Title: Reunion
Author: Fred Uhlman
Genre: WW2
Rating: 2/5
# pages: 100
Date read: June, 2009

1932 Germany: Middle-class, Jewish Hans forms an intense friendship with Konradin, a young aristocrat. A year later it is over. Reunion is a look at both the nature of friendship and the effect of Hitler’s rise to power on ordinary lives.

I sometimes get the feeling that books about World War II ought to be highly rated simply because they're about WW2, and therefore I feel guilty when I can't in good conscience do that. I don't know why that is.

Anyway, this is one of those books where I can't rate it much higher than I did. I don't know what I expected of the book, but this wasn't it. At only 100 pages it's more of a novella than a novel, and because of the Danish translation of the title (Iron Gate) I had assumed that it took place in a concentration camp, rather than - as the case is - in a fairly upper-class school in Stuttgart, Germany. I know that's my fault and I can't blame the book for my misconceptions, but it still affected the way I viewed it.

That aside, the book was reasonably interesting, but neither emotionally nor intellectually engaging, with the exception of the very final paragraph. The end was thrilling, and for once I didn't mind the climax being left unexplained - it seemed to fit the rest of the novella. Still, it seemed more like it ought to be a couple of chapters in a much longer book, than a book in its own right.

Book List