I don't know if I'm burnt out on WWII or even war fiction but this one was hard to follow. There was some good and lovely points in this book but for the most part the timeline felt a bit all over the place.

I initially thought I might enjoy this book, and then things changed. I was feeling really nostalgic for a bit, learning about the MC’s father. I was gaining interest and things just started jumping to random facts where names were used, with no background of who that character even was. It started to confuse me, and I just felt like I was then getting random facts about someone’s mysterious father. It wasn’t for me, but might be for someone else.

A small, but impressive collection of books, the library for the war-wounded inhabits a room on the upper floors of a rural hotel in Austria that serves as a space of retreat and recuperation for some of world war II’s wounded veterans. Monika, daughter of the manager, conversationally recounts her childhood in this idyll and the struggles of her father’s life in Library for the War-Wounded.

Helfer presents a factionalized account of her family, and much of it focuses on her father. Josef was born an illegitimate child who through education escaped the rural poverty of his family. His higher education was funded by the Catholic Church and he was on the path to the priesthood, when World War II took him off to way where he would lose his leg from frostbite. He married his nurse, whose family also struggled with poverty and acceptance. They found their way to the Austrian Alps where they took to running a hotel that became a convalescent home. The wider family would join them, a sister in law to keep house and the expansion of family brought by the birth of children. Josef had goals to attain his education still, and valued the pleasures of literacy and possession of books. However this quest for learning and coveting of books would lead to strife and loss of place, along with the sorrows of loss and dismantling of a family.

Helfer has Monika present this history to us in a very meandering conversational style, jumping from present to past to other tangents of family life as told by an elder. Portions are chronological and much is focused on the families time in the Austrian Alps. We know snippets of the after before the crucial events come to pass, some is foreshadowed, but clear explanations are still vague.

Despite its short length, we are focused on one man’s life struggle, but rarely through his own perspective. Though this is the point, for many works of literature ask if we can truly know those we love or live with, here what could be a revealing story of one man’s life and the stressors of war and change is muddled by a stream of consciousness narration. Perhaps something has been lost in translation, like books left to weather hidden in the woods.

Based on her own life story and family, Monika Helfer brings the post-World War II years to life in this historical fiction novel. Following the life of a German family in the postwar years, readers follow their protagonist, her siblings, mother, and war veteran father through their mundane, quotidian life which is speckled by family tension and PTSD. Their world is one of books, nature, and familial camaraderie, qualities which many readers will quickly recognize and feel as they continue through the book. Helfer’s characters are charming, realistic, and entertaining, and the world that they inhabit is realistic and tangible. Helfer brings the childlike whimsy, curiosity, and questions to the front of the novel, which follows the lens of her fictionalized child self, and this protagonist’s viewpoint is realistic and clear. Presenting an interesting take on the World War II historical fiction genre, readers are sure to enjoy this perspective of postwar Germany and the narrow case study lens it takes by focusing on a single family. This novel is a fascinating, compelling, engaging, and immersive historical fiction book, and its unique take on the genre, with the semi-autobiographical elements, adds to the atmosphere and characters in Helfer’s latest book.

I could not really get into this book. The characters felt flat and I could not bring up enough feeling to care what happened to them.

This one was not for me. Honestly, I don't know who it would be for. It may read better in the original German as it conforms to some of the continental writing styles I've encountered. The blurb suggests it's a story with a plot, but it isn't. It's something of a stream-of-consciousness memoir and it just... isn't very interesting. There's no tensions, no notable conflict. I really wanted to like this and I probably would have--had it been about a library for the war-wounded.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This book was difficult to rate on multiple levels. It did, like others have said, come across as a memoir as she used her name as one of the characters, whether or not it was, I have no idea.

Although the story was interesting with the library, the home and then the girls growing up, the writing was incredibly erratic. Sometimes changing stories from paragraph to paragraph, which made it very difficult to follow the story line and know when in the story an event was taking place. It wasn't even that the story was not told in a linear way, but that the timeline that you were reading about jumped so frequently into the past and future right after one another. I might not be the right audience for this book, as I struggle with stream of consciousness writing.

Some of the tangents that author went on seemed thrown in, for no reason as they were not part of the plot or any subplot.

Although I am rating this book a 2, I do think that the story within the book, however convoluted this version is, could be re-organized/written into a lovely book. I will say though, I'm not sure the title really fits, as only a portion of the book takes place there.

This was was an interesting premise, but I don't know that it stuck out to me much in it's execution. It lacked chapters to break it up and organize it a little bit.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

United States Publication: January 16, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for this advanced reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

It says on the front cover of this book that it is a novel but I disagree. It's a memoir. Maybe it's exaggerated or made up in some places, thus the novel label, but it's clear it is a memoir. Because of this, I am refraining from giving it an "official" rating. However, this title was terrible. Really, really terrible. I suspect that translation isn't solely to blame with this one. First of all, the book just starts, almost in mid-sentence. In fact, I thought it was an introduction to the book until three pages in I figured out it was the book itself. And that the author was writing it in stream of consciousness. But not well. (That might be partly the fault of translation.) The entire book is just a meandering story that has stops and starts, no chapter breaks, all stream of consciousness. It was painful to get through. And not interesting for anyone but the author. This is a memoir that should've remained unpublished and to be only passed around within the family. What an editor, and publishing house, was thinking in green-lighting it is baffling to me. I truly mean no disrespect to the author or her memories but this book was terrible, and the title is extremely misleading as is the label of a novel.

This book was not for me; it seemed to be "stream-of-consciousness" style and jumped from theme to theme. The title seemed to have little to do with the content of the book itself. I appreciated the chance to read the advanced copy.

This was definitely was a very interesting read. It was my first book by this author. It posed an interesting questions. Do we actually know our parents? It was thought provoking and a must read.