The Director by Daniel Kellmann

Friday, Feb. 27, 2026--San Antonio

The Director by Daniel Kellmann was longlisted for the Booker Prize.  It is historical fiction built around the life of the real German film director G. W. Pabst.  Considered to be one of the best film directors during the silent era and the director who made Greta Garbo famous, Pabst was a proponent of communism in the lead-up to WWII.  He was filming in France when Hitler came to power, so, even though not Jewish, he fled to the USA like other Germans who disagreed with the new government.  But in the US, he felt unappreciated and became upset because they would only give him funding for a film based on a poorly written script and tried to control certain aspects of the filming.  He returned to Europe by going to Switzerland, but prospects for being able to work there were very low.  He got word that his mother, living in their home in Austria (already annexed by Hitler), was doing poorly and needed to be taken to the sanatorium.  Traveling there to deal with the problem, the family's plans were to return to Switzerland and to travel back to America; they had all the exit papers and visas necessary for doing that.  But the next day, the German government declared war and invaded Poland.  Exit papers would not be honored.  Life became very difficult very fast.  The caretaker of the family home was now the local Nazi official in charge of the community, and he and his family forced Pabst and his family to move downstairs in the home and to become the caretakers while the caretaker family moved to the better quarters upstairs.  Fortunately for Pabst (since he was the greatest German director left in Germany and was not Jewish), the government overlooked his communist inclinations and provided funding for him with a guarantee that he could make non-political films that would be artistic honor the country externally.  He was also required to let Leni Riefenstahl serve as his assistant director so she could become their primary director of propaganda films.  The book continues with Pabst making films, their son (a creation of the writer and not someone that ever existed in real life) grew old enough to become exited about the date that he would be drafted into the army with this schoolmates, and the war eventually started turning around with it becoming more and more evident that the Nazis were losing.  Pabst made his last film which he considered to be his greatest, but it became lost to history.  It was an interesting story to read, but so many of the details are about how scripts are written, how films are made, how Pabst's work was different from that off others, etc., that it seemed to be too specialized and too distant from the actual war.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

Sunday, Feb. 21, 2026--San Antonio

The Wilderness by Ann Flournoy took me far more time to read than it should have.  The story was interesting, but it didn't "grab" me.  That left me reading only a few pages at a time and then putting it aside--over and over again.  It's the story of a group of friends as they go through college and then through life and sometime living near each other and sometimes across the country from each other.  It tells the ups and downs in their lives and their relationships (among each other and with others including the changes in them over time).  It also covers the changes in society over time with the end of the novel set in 2027 when one of them dies during societal upheaval taking place in the US under a President who is determined to control life with force.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026--San Antonio

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud was on many lists of top books of 2025 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize.  It is historical fiction related to several generations of one extended family, but it concentrates on one particular generation--that of the married couple Francois and Barabra while going backwards to tell the stories of their parents and siblings and forwards to tell the stories of their own children and grandchildren.  The novel begins in the early 1940s.  Gaston, a French navel officer, has been recently moved from an assignment in Beirut to Salonica (Thessaloniki today).  But Hitler's armies are moving into France quickly and Paris is expected to fall when they do.  Gaston has decided to send his wife and children to Algeria which is where they grew up, fell in love, and married.  The story backtracks to tell about life in Algeria before the war and continues through the war, through the uprisings against colonial rule in Algeria, telling of their son's successes in education, and follows what is happening within the family as Francois, the son, decides that his furture must be in America (where he eventually meets and marries Barbara).  Throughout the family history, there are cultural problems resulting in misunderstandings and hurt feelings, times of discrimination, times of tension, feelings of failure in various ways, examples of sacrifice, examples of misinterpretation of why things are happening, etc.  There is a point in the middle of the novel where so much detail is outlined so quickly that reading the book became a bit of a drag.  But, in general it is a good story and is exciting at times.  The ending becomes a shocker.  Overall, I gave the book 4 stars out of 5 (although I wavered at times in thinking I should go half a star lower).