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Bezig met laden... Shaken in the Waterdoor Jessica Dawn Penner
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Fiction. Women's Studies. 1903: a Mennonite woman gives birth to a daughter named Agnes. The child bears a birthmark known in Low German as Tieja Kjoaw, the Tiger's Scar. The mark portends greatness or tragedy. Agnes becomes the matriarch of a family struggling for greatness: her husband shaves his entire body to win God's favor; a tornado carries her daughter away on a clear winter day; convinced he is a modern Moses, her son frees a truckload of cattle; her granddaughter butchers a cat to save her marriage; a tiger residing in her daughter's backyard claims to be the love of Agnes' life. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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This multigenerational story is set in early 20th-century rural Kansas, in a German-speaking, Ukrainian Mennonite community rooted in tradition yet marching inexorably into the modern world. The tensions of belief, tradition, and change pull against an interleaved narrative of human experiences – love, loss, despair, lust – that darts back and forth over a period of around a hundred years.
Penner’s writing style is lyrical and precise, a pleasure to read. The absence of quotation marks in dialogue and the use of both High and Low German – sometimes translated, sometimes not – help to build a sense of otherness, of a community that understands its own rules even as it chafes against them. The sense of place is very strong; I could feel the blinding sun and smell the wheat and dust of harvest.
The cast of characters is vivid, each of their stories quickly sketched and yet memorable. They center loosely around Agnes, her husband Peter, and his sister Nora, whose story forms the core of the novel. It is Nora’s presence – as a memory, as a white tiger, as a disembodied Voice – that provides the dissonant note to lift the narrative further out of ordinariness and reinforce the feeling of tension I found to be present throughout the text.
Altogether I found Shaken in the Water an enjoyable, compelling literary read that gave me a sense of how the Mennonite community is evolving. ( )