Liked, not loved. Honestly a bit confusing for me. Thought the story telling was really beautiful, but just couldn't fully grasp what was going on.

I highlighted this book on my Booktube channel. You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/0UGiE3mbWOs

I was interested in the story because I’m always interested in family history.
However, the writing was disjointed and the narrative jumped from the author talking about her memories to then what she supposed happened with her grandmother’s story, as told to her by her aunt.
The question, at least for me, of Greta’s paternity wasn’t sufficiently answered.
The ending was incomplete because I still had questions about the family.

Despite a rather erratic style of writing, this book does present a fine picture of Austria and the effects of WWI on a family left without its father. Maria, a woman alone, must provide for her family any way she can. In my opinion, this may be due to the translation.

Set in the mountains of Austria, this novel follows Maria and her children as they fend for themselves while the patriarch of the family is away during WW1. I found the story to be very interesting, told from the perspective of one of the grandchildren of Maria through the tales of her Aunt Kathe. But I felt like I was missing something, either something that came before this book or a more conclusive end to the story.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC!

Maria copes with so much in this slim novel set in Austria during WWI, Her husband is off at war, the mayor is offering food in exchange for her "affection" and a visitor to the town has engaged her attention, And her children are starving. It's an oddly detached novel and one without chapters so it just keeps going. I wanted to like this given the set up but I never felt a beating heart. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

War on the home front can be as chaotic as war on the battlefront, especially if the home front is the last house before the mountain in Western Austria. The Moosbrugger famiyl, known locally as bagage, is isolated and struggling to survive while husband and father Josef is away on the battlegrounds of WWI. Male attention to his wife Maria, mother of four children, intensifies during Josef's absence and includes the postal carrier who has lusted after her for years, the mayor, on whom Josef relies to watch Maria and tend to the family's welfare, and Georg, a German stranger. Although Josef comes home on leave, when Maria becomes pregnant, everyone suspects the German stranger. Daily life is chaotic and Helfer does an excellent job of portraying the main characters as well as the landscape, the rigors of daily life without electricity and running water, and the impact of secrets on families throughout the generations.

This heartbreaking story, which is based on Helfer's family, is narrated by a granddaughter of Josef and his exquisitely beautiful wife, Maria, but the narration is not told in a linear way. The novel's style reflects the story it tells. The prose is beautiful but the story unfolds in bits and pieces, leaving the reader to either become absorbed in the book, as I was, or to put it down in confusion. There will be a limited audience for this Last House Before the Mountain, but that audience will be well rewarded.

A tragic story set in the time around world war 1 in Austria. Narrated by the granddaughter of the main character and beautifully details the hurdles she faced as a beautiful woman in a small town and whose husband was away at war.

Pros
Beautiful literary prose
The details are so vivid

Cons
No chapters, hard to find a place to take a break
Some things were lost in translation, did not seem to make sense in context or to those ignorant to the grammatical form of Austrian/German language


This is an award winning, character driven story that didn't have a lot of plot development. It is written in a traditional form which I loved, but might not be for everyone. Maria portrays a strong female providing and protecting her family and faces many different difficulties while her husband is away at war. Not a feminist story but it was women like Maria who founded and were involved in the suffragette movement around that time. This story offers a lot to the imagination and food for thought.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a complimentary copy of this multi-generational family saga in exchange for an honest review. I found the writing to be rather stilted and stiff, but perhaps this is due to the translation. Overall I had trouble connecting with the characters.