Stones from the River

It's taken me a while to read this book it's  kept me company on my train journey to work every day for the last month and I'll miss it even though it irritated me in places.
Anyway, this is a story totally based on the life and inhabitants of a  fictional village  in Germany between 1921 and 1951.  It was a story about families, mental-illness, love,loss, heart-break, fear, guilt, betrayal, ignorance, knowledge and strength.  (Phew!!)   All told through the view point of Trudi.   Trudi loses her Mother to mental illness when she is four and is bought up by her fabulous Dad, Leo.  For me, Leo was a the star of the story along with the unnamed benefactor, who's always leaving needed gifts for people on their doorsteps...finding out who he was at the end of the novel was bitter sweet.
Trudi literally isn't your 'average' narrator, she's a dwarf who spends the majority of her young life hanging from door jambs trying to stretch herself. Obviously being so different isn't good in Nazi Germany but she manages to survive by taking a back seat...remaining in the shadows and watching the world around her disintegrate. People treat her like a child but she finds a lover, hides Jews, refuses to join the Nazi party and collects secrets about people.   That she actually survives these years is astounding. (Would she really have survived? )
I found her initial constant moaning about being a dwarf pretty irritating and boring to be honest but as she becomes older and sees the life around her it's interesting to see how her perceptions change. I really like her by the end of the book.  And my God, I feel like I've really spent over 30 years in her company.  This is a real village book, totally engrossed with village people's lives, relationships and personalities.  There are so many characters it's hard to keep up with who is who and sometimes it was just totally confusing.
It was the simple acts of kindness and bravery which affected me...the kid who gives a loaf of bread through the window of a train bound for the camps, who is then bundled onto the train herself and never seen again; the old woman who is constantly beating up young Nazis with her umbrella and  the people who dig unsafe tunnels between their houses in which they try to hide their Jewish neighbours.

Ursula Hegi is an amazing writer but for me the story was just too vast with too many characters. I found it hard to keep a track of every relationship. it was a long book and would have been better with fewer people in it, although maybe that was the purpose, a total immersion into village life during this period.