The title of Minneapolis anthropologist Solveig Brown’s book “All on One Plate” refers to its subject: the overwhelming expectations that are heaped upon 21st-century American mothers. A monumental book that can be read in a single sitting.īy Solveig Brown. The novel’s respectful, concise accounting of its key moments illuminates its beauty and meaning, and reminds us that each life, no matter how long or brief, is a whole and rounded story, worthy of our attention and respect. Like most lives, Egger’s brings joy, despair, love, loss, success and failure. His life, which plays out in the shadow of great mountains, horrific human history and remarkable technological change, is utterly ordinary, and when he dies, few notice, much less mourn - but because of how reverently his story is rendered, readers will find him unforgettable. It tracks, from childhood to death, one Andreas Egger, a humble, impoverished, oft abused, barely literate laborer who, except for a harrowing stint as a German soldier and POW during World War II, is rooted for nearly eight decades in a remote mountain town. The story’s power lies in its raw simplicity. This sparse, beautiful novel by Berlin author and actor Robert Seethaler was a bestseller in Germany when it was released in 2014, and the love is likely to spread with this month’s release of Charlotte Collins’ lovely English translation. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 151 pages, $23.) By Robert Seethaler, translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.
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