“Hagena writes in sensual, poetic prose, bringing a fairy-tale quality to her gothic tale of family secrets and deceits.” — Booklist
“This melancholy novel about lifting the layers of history is packed with gorgeous imagery and undertones of buried secrets...Sultry, tragic and intensely atmospheric.” — The Times (London)
Beautifully phrased, artful and sometimes ingenious...The Taste of Apple Seeds is atmospheric and sensual...Hagena ingrains the creaking old house--and the book--with melancholy; every word, every place is weighted with memories. — The Independent
Hagena’s sensitivity and attention to detail, and a narrator whose honesty and comical clumsiness keep the story light and engaging, have universal appeal. — Sunderland Echo
The Taste of Apple Seeds is a pure masterpiece. Germany has had a triumph with the debut of this unknown author last year. — Le Nouvel Observateur
Between the lines, you smell the odor “of apples and old stones”...You eat her apple entirely, even with the apple seeds. — Elle (FR)
Trespassing from emotion to tenderness, from laughing to tragedy. Katharina Hagena retraces subtly the destiny of each of her characters who are all related to each other. In a fluid and delicate writing style she intertwines remembering and forgiving, a moving story. — Notes Bibliographiques
“There is an enchantment about this book which is almost like a fable...With seamless flash-backs Katharina Hagena retellst he story of this friendship.” — Ballarat Courier
“Intriguing and carefully written.” — Daily Mail (London)
“Unbearably moving but ultimately uplifting.” — Good Housekeeping, UK
“Hagena’s sensitivity and attention to detail, and a narrator whose honesty and comical clumsiness keep the story light nad engaging, have a universal appeal.” — Irish News
“The book works a slow charm as Iris chronicles the love life of one aunt after another.” — Metro London
“It’s easy to see why this riveting gothic saga spent two years on the German bestseller list.” — Saga Magazine
“[This] almost has a magical feel to it, and many will find it to be extremely moving and thought-provoking. This hidden gem is utterly engrossing — RT Book Reviews
There is an enchantment about this book which is almost like a fable...With seamless flash-backs Katharina Hagena retellst he story of this friendship.
Intriguing and carefully written.
Between the lines, you smell the odor “of apples and old stones”...You eat her apple entirely, even with the apple seeds.
Beautifully phrased, artful and sometimes ingenious...The Taste of Apple Seeds is atmospheric and sensual...Hagena ingrains the creaking old house—and the book—with melancholy; every word, every place is weighted with memories.
This melancholy novel about lifting the layers of history is packed with gorgeous imagery and undertones of buried secrets...Sultry, tragic and intensely atmospheric.
Hagena’s sensitivity and attention to detail, and a narrator whose honesty and comical clumsiness keep the story light and engaging, have universal appeal.
Trespassing from emotion to tenderness, from laughing to tragedy. Katharina Hagena retraces subtly the destiny of each of her characters who are all related to each other. In a fluid and delicate writing style she intertwines remembering and forgiving, a moving story.
Hagena writes in sensual, poetic prose, bringing a fairy-tale quality to her gothic tale of family secrets and deceits.
Unbearably moving but ultimately uplifting.
The Taste of Apple Seeds is a pure masterpiece. Germany has had a triumph with the debut of this unknown author last year.
Hagena writes in sensual, poetic prose, bringing a fairy-tale quality to her gothic tale of family secrets and deceits.
The book works a slow charm as Iris chronicles the love life of one aunt after another.
It’s easy to see why this riveting gothic saga spent two years on the German bestseller list.
[This] almost has a magical feel to it, and many will find it to be extremely moving and thought-provoking. This hidden gem is utterly engrossing
Hagena’s sensitivity and attention to detail, and a narrator whose honesty and comical clumsiness keep the story light nad engaging, have a universal appeal.
2013-12-17
From German author Hagena, the story of a young German woman whose inheritance of her grandmother's house leads her to plumb her family's past. This book was an international best-seller. In Bulloch's translation from the German, nature imagery is colorfully transcribed, which is fortunate, since Hagena's descriptions of the lake, forest and gardens surrounding the ancestral apple farm of the Deelwater family are among this novel's principal charms. Bertha, the matriarch, who survived her husband, Hinnerk, by many years--most of them in a state of steadily worsening dementia--has died, willing portions of her estate to her three daughters, Inga, Harriet and Christa, and, unexpectedly, bequeathing the farmhouse to Christa's daughter, Iris, the narrator. As Iris, a librarian, takes time off to decide whether or not to keep the house, her recollections and encounters with denizens of the tiny lakeside village of Bootshaven shape the novel. Family secrets are mulled over as Iris' consciousness, searching for clarity, circles back repeatedly to crucial events she witnessed as a child. Herr Lexow, elderly caretaker of the farm, confesses that he might have fathered Inga during World War II while Hinnerk was off at his job as a prison camp commandant. (Hinnerk's checkered past with the Nazi Party is not a major aspect of the novel--the primary focus is on the women's comparatively sheltered lives.) Whimsy abounds, striking a discordant note with the overall meditative tone of the book--for some reason, Iris' wardrobe is limited to old ball gowns once belonging to her aunts; she and Bertha's lawyer, Max, meet cute while swimming naked in the lake; and Aunt Inga, born during an electrical storm, cannot touch anyone without shocking them. Aunt Harriet, now a devotee of an Indian guru, had her heart broken, and the child born of this liaison, Rosmarie, died under circumstances not fully elucidated until the novel's climax. Since much of the nuanced wit is perhaps lost in translation, what remains is a decorative but aimless family chronicle. Matriarch Bertha's decline is, however, viscerally felt and vividly detailed.
