This is a story about stories. Stories that people tell, stories that people believe and stories about things that have happened. The plot follows four generations of women, the oldest of whom was born in the Northern European forests of snow, and who emigrates to America where her family grows. Told by the four women themselves, this story has an added injection of folklore and superstition which continues through the more western life in the States and provides another dimension to the novel. Interpretation, myth or reality, all of life is as real as the person who tells the story believes it to be, and here we have four points of view, four realities.Llana is the matriarch, mysterious and strong, in touch with the 'old ways', who survives a climate (meterological and political) to find love and a new life. Sashie, her daughter is very different and rejects her mothers traditional roots for the 'clean' American way. Mara is the grandaughter, the darkest character, whose view is almost sociopathic. Finally Nomie in the present day, who is closest to Llana and sees the truth through her eyes.All four have a distinctive voice in the narrative, but it is Llana from the old country who is the strongest presence and provides the pivot that all other characters revolve around, and finally circle back to.Some of the novel feels like a series of short fairystories, especially the first part in Europe. This is emphasised by the short punchy sentences. The first 20 pages were a captivating opening into Llana's world, and raced away without me noticing that I was enveloped in the plot.Some of the stories later in the book are more ambiguous and left unexplained, like Sashie's cleaners, or Mara's ladder to the sky. Reality, story or delusion? This sometimes left me frustrated but it also leads you to ask what is reality?Budnitz pulls no punches in illustrating the horrific episodes in life too, like in war, with poignant descriptions and the economy of words adding to the distasteful scenes. Every fairystory has some sense of the horrific, a wolf lurking in grandma's clothing. Budnitz employs all of these tales we were brought up on with fascination and wonder.This is not a long book but the time scale (early 20th century, through World War II, to the present day) gives it an epic feel which led me to a few tears at the ending. A very enjoyable book and an interesting voice to look out for.
“I thought how strange it is, the way the shape of your life grows up around you unbidden, like weeds. In the beginning you do not intend to live any particular way, you think you are living freely, are hardly aware of the subtle choices you are making. But as the years pass your life slowly closes in around you, hardening like a shell, crowding you from all sides, hemming you in with furniture and debts and habits, forcing you into narrower and narrower channels until suddenly you find you have no choices any longer and can only continue in the same direction until the end.”This book, as a whole is hard for me to gauge. Some of it, was wonderful, and because of that, the parts that were not wonderful were glaring and obviously lacking.The beginning, a story of a girl from a remote Eastern European village with the superstition and the folk-lore woven into her tale. It was intriguing and fabulous. Then the story moved on, to her daughter, her granddaughter and her great granddaughter, and they were such weaker characters that it almost ruined the book. Along with the characters being unlikeable, the story lost it’s magical touch.When I started the book, I loved it. When I finished the book, I just liked it alright.
Do You like book If I Told You Once (1999)?
This is a book that I chose for myself. It was not a book club pick, or recommended to me from anyone else or from my usual sources. And, since I have chosen a real streak of stinkers for myself lately, I did not have high expectations for this one. I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed it. It's sort of a weird story about three generations of women from the same family. It has some magic thrown in, but it's still easy to visualize everything and kept me captured. I enjoyed that it was a story about 4 women who are very strong willed and want what they want, but all of these women places more value on the men who came into their lives than they did on each other. I don't think that is RIGHT, but it's just interesting how that is the way it goes a lot of the time, without us even realizing it.
—Rosie
Sometimes the bandits attacked the soldiers and stole their military boots and jackets for themselves. sometimes the soldiers wore shaggy fur cloaks to keep out the cold. Sometimes the wolves walked on their hind legs like men.Ilana was born in a village in the forests of Eastern Europe, a place where creatures from myths and fairy tales were part of everyday life. But at the age of sixteen, tired of looking after her younger brothers and sisters, she left home for good. On her travels, she falls in love with a musician, and they decide to emigrate to a land of opportunity where the streets are paved with gold, although Ilana doesn't fall for that particular fairy-tale. Although Ilana's early life is full of magic, adventure and a happy marriage, the lives of her daughter Sashie and grand-daughter Mara are much more constrained, and only her great-granddaughter Nomie is prepared to listen to the fantastical tales that Ilana tells about her family and life in the old country, and may finally be able to break the pattern.Gloomier than your average magical realist story. My mother, all three said, with a mixture of love and fear.My brother, they said, with adoration.My daughter, they said, their voices fearful and uncertain.Mother. Brother. Daughter.If you did not look you would think it was the same person every time.
—Isabel (kittiwake)
Brilliant, magical, addictive narrative threads weaving the lives together of four generations of women from Eastern Europe. A rare gem of a book, totally understated and deserving of so much more attention than this book seems to have earned. Budnitz's prose is startling, a series of wild hoops linking reality with far out fantasy snow-drifts, making life seem totally normal and insanely extraordinary and brutal even, all at once. I was steeped and sustained by this book for its duration, and did not want it to end.
—Amanda
