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Summit Avenue

19.32

Summit Avenue

4.7

Highest ranking 101

7 comments

$19.32

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Noelle H.Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2018

I loved this book. This is my new favorite writer! Magical, moving and poetic. Her weaving of the fairy tales into the story is masterful. She paints with her words. I will read all of her books!

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"blissengine"Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2000

Kathrin is sent to America from Germany after the death of her mother. She eventually comes to work for a woman named Violet on Summit Avenue translating fairy tales from German. Violet has secrets, and over a space of time, she begins to tell the young woman her secrets and the two have one night of passion. The confused Kathrin flings herself into marriage with an ambitious young man who fathers her child. She eventually leaves her husband and searches for Violet. Like a modern adaption of a fairy tale, Sharratt's novel is lush and metaphoric in places, and is evocative of the early part of the 1900s, right before and during World War I. It reminded me of Emma Donoghue's "Kissing the Witch", which also used fairy tales in a sort of modern retelling. I was especially impressed with Sharratt's use of the maiden/mother/crone dynamic. If you enjoyed "Tipping the Velvet" by Sarah Waters, then you certainly love this book.

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Susan ItoReviewed in the United States on October 11, 2000

From the very first page of this book, I felt as if I were in a lovely trance. I responded to it on a deeply personal level, as a writer who loves language, as a woman, as a person who is enchanted with tales as a window into human experience. I felt as if Mary Sharratt had written this book uniquely for me, but I know that many, many others will feel the same way. Others have summarized the plot so I don't need to go into that here. This is one of the books on my shelf that will surely show the tatters of a hundred more readings in years to come.

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G. HydukeReviewed in the United States on November 12, 2000

Mary Sharratt is a wonderful writer, quite frankly, a writer to be envied, and if I can say this without hexing her, an old-fashioned writer. By that I mean not merely that the book is set in early 1900's - and she does put us right into the look and feel of Minneapolis and that era very well - but that she writes closely and carefully and thoughtfully and persistently and richly. So much writing today does not seek to engage the reader at any level beneath the most obvious. I like her style. All of her metaphors and allusions and analogies and similes are lovely and they tie into mood, mode, theme, premonition and each other - as well as the basic story level - seamlessly, exquisitely. This is obviously a book that women will enjoy, but anyone who enjoys rich language and writing will enjoy it, and anyone who enjoys reading about the life of the imagination, forming narratives as consciousness, layers of reality, and a sense of history, immigration life will enjoy it. The book is sumptuous. Her language, choice of words, imagery, is supple, allusive, suggestive - and consistent with her story - in a natural and earthy way. For example, she describes a woman's skin as "glowing like the inside of a shell" at one point, a vivid erotic description, yet the mother of pearliness also carries multiple meanings. The story is a tender, tumultuous, very feminine meditation on love, desire, identity, self-exile, consciousness, and cultural transition and growth. An intellectual middle-aged widow hires a young German mill girl, an immigrant, to help her translate fairy tales, her late husband's last ethnology project. Tantalizingly ambiguous themes and secrets and mysteries unfold like narratives within narratives, like fairy tales, like dreams until they build into a life that the young woman is preapred to accept and thrive in. The exploration of the evolving relationship, which includes a sense of discovery for both Violet and Kathrin, as they trade roles, maiden and mother, mentor and student, sisters and lovers, is beautiful and empowering and hopeful, regardless of your gender. I've already said too much. As a man who enjoys all kinds of literature, with no set reading pattern, this was a pleasant find. Absolutely sublime.

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JoannaReviewed in the United States on August 11, 2000

This appealed to me on a variety of levels. It was told in 1rst person, by a woman who was an immigrant, coming of age in an alien society. It was a historical novel that offered insight into America's shift from Old World to New World Values (not always a good thing!) and taught me something about people's attitudes towards WWI. It's also a love story and the intertwining of Kathrin's story with the fairy tales was wonderful. It's definitely character oreintated--the plot unfolds at a leisurely pace--but a great read.

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Elizabeth CunninghamReviewed in the United States on July 2, 2000

Mary Sharratt's moving and poetic novel is a paean to the healing power of story in its most timeless form as fairytale. Kathrin, an impoverished young German immigrant arrives in pre-World War I United States to find work in the industrial mills of Minnesota. She is of course, also The Beautiful Mill Girl of fairytale. Driven by both literal and figurative hunger, she soon leaves the mill to work for an enigmatic older woman, a beautiful sorceress, as a translator of German tales. As her own story unfolds, fairytale becomes a thread to follow through a disorienting, sometimes frightening labyrinth. When her life unravels, torn apart by the conflicting demands of inner and outer life, longing and conventional morality, it is through story that she mends and makes amends, reweaving body and soul into a new, triumphant, surprising whole.

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"carynlee"Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2000

This is a poetic novel of longing, the timeless story of a young woman yearning to find herself and her place in an unfamiliar world. As an immigrant steeped in the fairy tales of her native Germany, Kathrin struggles to build a new life in the flour mills of Minneapolis during the World War I era. She perseveres in learning English, dreams of books and college and being loved. Unexpectedly swept into a different world by an elegant and cultured woman who hires her to translate German folk tales, Kathrin soon arrives at an emotional crossroads. The author does a lovely job of blending rich historical detail with the psychological and emotional resonances of ancient folk tales. Readers will be swept away by the story and yet think long afterward about its many layers. This is one of my favorite books of the year.