Stones from the River discussion

I recently re-read this book and loved it again, this time picking up more on the many themes woven expertly throughout the book. One in particular was the theme of being an outsider.

Learning to identify with Trudi, we can really see how terrible it can be to be considered an outsider, from when she was a little girl left unpicked for school yard games to when she is an adult, where the town that loves and accepts her in some ways never believes that she has accepted a lover in her life.

I was intrigued when Trudi saw her beloved friends become outsiders for being Jewish. Ironically, the one way that Trudi was accepted and fit the norm- her blond hair and blue eyes, was the one norm she wished wasn't imposed on people. It was interesting to watch Trudi see other people fall in and out of the "outsider" role including the unmarried women (during times of war they were no longer outsiders because most women were without husbands), the overweight boy that went missing for years and then came back at the end thin and successful, and even her friend, Juta, whose independence and feisty personality kept the town from fully accepting her.

Did anyone else identify with these theme of being an outsider? Are there are other representations more important than the ones I've noted here?

I think you hit the nail on the head. This book is all the good, the bad, and the ugly of a community. I have just finished another of Hegi's books (Floating in my Mother's Palm) that is almost like a sketchbook for Stones from the River. The same characters appear--and although I didn't find it nearly as good as Stones from the River, it did confirm to me the themes in Stones: The idea that people isolate each other for the stupidest of reasons. The idea that a community may seem normal, trouble-free, a good, "safe" town, but the reality being that people cannot truly save each other from other people (or for themselves for that matter). The idea that we all suffer individual sorrows, and that we all have stories to be told. The need for empathy.

I think Hegi's work (or what I've read of it) really touches to the core of what it means to be a person. And stresses the need to learn how to help, support, communicate, and empathize with each other as much as we can. We can't stop the sorrow in the world (there will always be some sort of discrimination, there will always be an 'outsider') but we can certainly band together and fight against it so when we ourselves become the outsiders one day, we have others who are willing to stand beside us as well.

If you liked this book, you would also like "The Little Giant of Aberdeen County" by Tiffany Baker. I loved Stones from the River and am really enjoying "The Little Giant".

I'm only about page 225 of this. It's the first Hegi I've read. What bowls me over, however (and the feeling is still with me at p. 225) is what a gigantic hurdle Hegi has presented herself with, given a sort of similar tale told by the dwarf-main character in the 'German-granddaddy' authorship of 'The Tin Drum' (by G. Grass) -- close to the same time period; definitely the same German social issues/problems of the descent into National Socialism and the pre-war and war years... Accidental?/deliberate? of Hegi to do that in this book she authored?... (Seriously: It's like trying to rewrite 'Huckleberry Finn' to take that Grass book on, by making it so similar to start. ...) But as I'm only so far through it, we'll give Hegi her due as an author (of my full read of this). And there could be so many ways you could go (as author) by picking the theme of being an 'outsider' (like 'dwarf,' in this case) in that German time and social environment. But even at p. 225, I know the 'outsider' theme is going to ricochet off the Jewish characters in this book -- who else, though?; that remains to be seen.... But perhaps it is as Jillian says, and Hegi means to write about different things here, than G. Grass did in his, in the long run. Full of in-depth and slowly-accumulating detail for a time now long gone by, at least -- although the 'slowness' is going to put some prospective readers off reading 'Stones.' (Well, you can't have everything in any given book...) A final, and nice, detail of the writing (?editorial process?) is that every single German word has been translated into English immediately so that those who don't understand German won't be unnecessarily discouraged as they read through it.