{"id":734,"date":"2009-01-04T20:23:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T01:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2010-06-12T20:28:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T00:28:27","slug":"the-good-german-by-joseph-kanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=734","title":{"rendered":"The Good German by Joseph Kanon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"litflicks\"One of my picks for the Lit Flicks Challenge<\/a> hosted by Jessica at The Bluestocking Society<\/a> was The Good German <\/em>by\u00c2\u00a0Joseph Kanon.<\/p>\n

First I read the book and then several weeks later I watched the movie directed by Steven Soderbergh starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved the book and hated the movie.\u00c2\u00a0 The book sat unread for a few weeks on my coffee table.\u00c2\u00a0 The size was slightly intimidating.\u00c2\u00a0 If I were to make a top 10 list of the books I read this year it would be on the list.<\/p>\n

The book follows Jake Geismar, an American journalist who lived in Berlin before World War II.\u00c2\u00a0 The story takes place in July and August 1945.\u00c2\u00a0 Jake is looking for Lena, the married German woman he loves, when he gets caught up in the murder of an American soldier which ties into a hunt for Lena’s husband.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The book is full of ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 Who or what defines a “good German” from a “bad German” during World War II?\u00c2\u00a0 Before the end of the war, the knowledge of the death camps becomes common amongst German adults.\u00c2\u00a0 How do the Allies decide who is less guilty of aiding the Nazis?\u00c2\u00a0 Is the person who wears the Nazi pin and threatens her neighbors just as guilty as the person who drove a\u00c2\u00a0truck equipped with a hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside passengers or the scientist who determined how many calories a\u00c2\u00a0day were needed to keep\u00c2\u00a0Jewish laborers\u00c2\u00a0alive?\u00c2\u00a0 How can a country rebuild itself when the previous government was killing its citizens?\u00c2\u00a0 Is the person you knew before\u00c2\u00a0a war who had to make difficult choices the same person afterwards?<\/p>\n

It is also full of suspense.\u00c2\u00a0 Geismar’s discoveries are completed through his various connections.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a character is wasted.\u00c2\u00a0 Some appear to be playing more than one side and it isn’t until the end that all of the alliances are revealed.\u00c2\u00a0 One female photographer served as a sidekick and it was easy to imagine a spunky woman in the movie role.\u00c2\u00a0 My only complaint is that some information is withheld to keep the reader from reaching the same conclusions as Geismar while information had been forthcoming earlier in the novel.<\/p>\n

In a movie adaptation the screenwriter has a difficult job.\u00c2\u00a0 I think the goal for this screenplay was to focus more on the espionage plot than the love story or the ideas in the book.\u00c2\u00a0 Characters were collapsed into one person (Tobey Maguire’s part was originally two characters in the book) or had screen time but were ignored entirely.\u00c2\u00a0 The only good thing about this movie is that I rented it from the library so it didn’t cost me anything other than time to see it.\u00c2\u00a0 During 2008 I saw over a hundred movies and this was not near the top of my list.\u00c2\u00a0 The book set\u00c2\u00a0my expectations too high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my picks for the Lit Flicks Challenge hosted by Jessica at The Bluestocking Society was The Good German by\u00c2\u00a0Joseph Kanon. First I read the book and then several weeks later I watched the movie directed by Steven Soderbergh starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved the book and hated the… Continue reading The Good German by Joseph Kanon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[24,37,23,89,90],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-review","tag-book","tag-challenge","tag-film","tag-joseph-kanon","tag-the-good-german","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}