Mia Gallagher

This book is incredible. I was impressed most by the parallel drawn between the arbitrariness of nationhood assignment and the arbitrariness of gender assignment, and the gravely serious (potentially deadly) consequences of each. Flipping between the writing styles for each character/mode of narrative felt effortless.

I picked up this book because I heard the author's interview on Jessa Crispin's podcast, and she discussed the challenge of researching the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Czechoslovakia after WWII, information that comes through in the novel in an interview with Anna Bauer, a Sudeten German woman who fled to England. My family is also ethnically German (Donauschwaben) and was expelled from Yugoslavia (now Serbia) under a similar nationalist program during the same time period. I've never read a novel that addresses the experiences of this population, and it was gratifying to read about the larger significance of this huge piece of my family's story in such a compassionate, intellectual, ambitious novel.… (mehr)