Bought from the Orelli English bookshop in preparation for our February Bookclub!

What a very strange and thought provoking book! At times, reading it was extremely hard going. It was hard to work out which narrator it was, and how the narrator related to the rest of the characters. The narrative voice changed from Oskar to his Grandma to his unknown Grandfather and the action jumped around from Oskar's present day, to his Grandparents then and now. The actual style and layout of the book was challenging, including photos and colour and writing and text that was unreadable. I think the main themes were communication, or rather, the lac of communication between people. I found it interesting that we didn't hear Oskar's Mothers voice. This was really a story about men, fathers and sons. Oskar reminded me of several other boys in literature. Intelligent, precocious, emotional awareness but no ability to really relate to other children. Hints of Oskar in the Blechtrommel, Louis in
the ninth life of Louis Drax & Chrisopher the curious incident of the dog in the nightime

Looking forward immensely to the bookclub discussion on this book!