All That I Am: A Novel

After Stasiland, this is a step backwards. It's writing is superficial and although I wanted to care about the characters, they are outlined and not developed internally. On this ground, for me it does not work as a novel. The sources and acknowledgements at the back look like fascinating starting points to develop ideas and characters from. Looking at "All That I Am", it reads as a series of events with short chapters and extensive use of paragraphing and dialogue, as if I could be willed into a film script without any effort by the reader. Perhaps this was aimed at the 18 to 30 generation who with high school history under their belt might respond to historical events with interest. The problem for me was not the research, it was in the writer's skill in writing creatively and having the ability to get into the skin of the characters. I persevered with it, although I could sense within the first 50 pages that there was little substance behind the hype.

Powerful, beautiful, sad. An amazing story wonderfully and passionately told.

The fictional story of a group of young political activists who are forced to flee Germany in the years before WWII and the reach of the Nazis to silence them. The author uses real people and events and The voices of Ernst Toller and Ruth as narrators,

I liked Stasiland very much, but All That I Am seems confused as to its nature. It has qualities of memoir, biography, history and fiction, and the result is a muddle, and quite unsatisfying as a novel. I think she should have stuck to the historical story rather than translate it into the genre of fiction. Funder is keen to expose what was going on in Germany in the pre-war years but the tone is earnest rather than engaging. While the lead characters might be true to history, perhaps the facts were weighing them down; I felt they lacked colour and appeal. In addition, the wide range of secondary characters, only sketched in, made it hard to keep track of who they were. Finally, I didn’t like the mix of present tense and reminiscence used by the two main narrators – it was bit disorienting.

It is sometimes difficult to separate a book from the hype surrounding it, and this is particularly true since All That I Am won the Miles Franklin Award. When it comes down to brass tacks, this is not an especially insightful look at life for refugees of the Holocaust, but it is still an interesting and worthwhile read. The novel alternates between two narrators - young activist Ruth and famed writer Ernst Toller - as they navigate (somewhat disjointedly) through several different time periods. Perhaps because Ruth is based on a real-life friend of the author, she feels more rounded and authentic than Toller, whose life is drawn from secondary sources only. I found myself looking forward to Ruth's next chapter, sometimes wishing Funder had stuck with a single protagonist. All That I Am has its flaws, but the betrayal Ruth experiences at the hands of a trusted ally is truly devastating.

The winner of Australia’s Miles Franklin Award and several other prizes, Funder’s WWII drama, All That I Am, is said to be based on real characters. A group of left-wing German activists find themselves self-exiled to England when Hitler comes to power in the 1930s. From their London base, they try to alert the world to the human-rights atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler’s government. With hindsight, we think all should have listened. But no one did.I found this to be very powerful in an elegant, understated fashion, and think it well-deserving of the prizes and honourable mentions that it garnered.Read this if: you’re interested in a slightly different perspective on Hitler’s rise to power. 4½ stars

A complex story set in the years following the Nazis coming to power in Germany and the outbreak of WW11 that focuses on German political exiles in London. Funder brings a relatively unknown (at least to me) bit of history to life in a taut, but ultimately extremely bleak story involving betrayal of the highest order. There are no happy endings for any involved.

All That I Am displays great respect for people acting in heroic ways during wartime. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, we follow Ruth, Dora, Hans and Toller living in Germany. They work as part of the underground against the Third Reich. They are expelled outside of the Reich’s borders and wind up in London as refugees.Ms. Funder helps us understand the premise of her book through the voice of two minor characters. “All that we are not stares back at all that we are.” P. 96“ We must believe in God…because if we don’t we will have to believe in man, and then we will only be disappointed.” P. 237 We learn, however that some of the main characters exceed expectations and act courageously and with little fear for their own fates in order to inform England of Hitler’s threat.The premise is extraordinary, and is based on true events. I found the book disjointed. The point of view and time periods switch often. This complicates the reading, despite the fact that chapter headings reveal the character speaking. The outcome grabs you by the collar, but the “getting there” is a bit of a maze. Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont

Il found this very interesting, moreso because it was historical fiction of peoples' lives trying to warn Europe regarding the events in Nazi Germany. I cared about many of the characters, although I did not find it easy to know them all. I also did not always know the exact time frame, but I do not feel that was important. Knowing the risks these people took made the novel worthwhile.

I felt bereft for several days after finishing this book. It's a novel woven from real-life events, which always makes me a bit anxious the thing will simply fall flat, but in this case quite the opposite happened. It's sparky, effervescent, clever, nuanced, gripping...I could go on, but I'd rather not take up any more of the time you could spend reading All That I Am instead.

Like other reviewers, I'm afraid I found this a difficult book to engage with. The first line about being in the bath when Hitler came to power is very powerful,and the prologue drew me in but I then just couldn't get into the story at all. I preferred the parts told by Ruth to the parts told by Toller, but generally neither narrative really grabbed me in the way I would have hoped.I may revisit the book at some point in the future, but for the time being I'm going to move on to something else.

Sad, beautiful, important book. The best I've read so far this year.

I know this book has won an award and I was looking forward to reading it for a book club meeting but I was disappinted with it. The historical aspect of the book was interesting and needs to be told especially since it is a story built around real people. I did no know that there were people exiled from Germany working in England, trying to make people aware, unsuccessfully, of what was happening in Germany. I found the format that it was written in difficult to get used to, that the story is told by two characters Ruth and Toller and that in each of their sections the time period moves forward and back. I did not really become emotionally attached to the characters and found too that there were too many minor characters so that at times it was difficult to keep track of them. there was not a lot of detail about them. It was not a gripping read for me - in some ways I was just reading to get to the end.

I love books that feature real life events and the people who figured prominently in them. The historical data and the characters in this book were fascinating, I just had a little trouble with the format. I appreciated that the book chapters were headed with the persons name, but within the chapters themselves the events were related into the past and the present. Different chapters also did this, back and forth and while I could keep track of what was happening when, it served as a distraction and kept me becoming fully invested in the story. I would get into one part and it would be switched to another, very frustrating especially since this was a very well written book. Just really didn't care for the structure.

I wanted to read this book before the Mile’s Franklin award for 2012 is announced as I’m predicting this book will win. All That I Am by Anna Funder is told from the perspective of Ruth Becker and Ernst Toller in alternate chapters. Both Ruth and Toller are remembering life in 1930’s Germany as political activists. Both characters, along with Ruth’s husband Hans and Toller’s lover Dora, publically speak out against Hitler and everything he stands for, advocating independence and freedom of speech for Germany.

This book starts out very heavy; trying to cover all the relevant back story of Germany in the 1930’s while still trying to drive the story along. This is a delicate balance to manage but I think Anna Funder did a good job at managing this. I know people may disagree with me but I think with the subject matter and the back story that needs to be covered, the author still manages to keep the reader turning the page, and for me, that never felt boring. I love the fact that this story is more about the politics and the effect Hitler’s rise to power will have on the German people rather than dealing with the holocaust.

The simple fact that this book tries to deal with the social impacts of the changing Germany has been the biggest contributing factor to my enjoyment of the book. I couldn’t care less about Toller who is writing his autobiography or Ruth, who after reading Toller’s writing, is remembering her side of the story. I know they risk a lot to speak out and I knew Hitler’s regime were actively trying to stop political opposition so I probably should care more for the characters, but the fictionalised German history was more interesting for me.

All That I Am would be a tough book to write and while at times it was heavy and at other time I might not have cared too much of the story; Anna Funder did do an excellent job at writing this novel. The book reminded me of the 2002 movie Max for some weird reason; mainly because it also was a fictionalised account of Hitler rising to power and how he dealt with the political opposition. For those who don’t know the movie Max starred John Cusack as a fictional Jewish art dealer and a young Austrian painter, Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor). The interesting thing about the movie was it explores Hitler and the view’s that shaped Nazi ideology, while also taking a look at the artistic designs of the Third Reich.

Anna Funder must have done a lot of research in preparing to write this book. I know she has a non-fiction book called Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall but I think that was more about East Germany, but in the course of researching that book she might have gotten all the information needed for All That I Am. I’m glad to have read this novel; I think it offers an interesting insight into a world I was never a part of. It is an interesting piece of history and sociology. Anna Funder has won the Australian Independent Booksellers Indie Book Award for Literary Fiction and has been shortlisted for Miles Franklin Award for this book. I’d be interested to see if this book will stand the test of time.

This is one of my favourite novels.

"Hans, who was shy speaking to the English, spoke of them as they fitted his preconceptions: a nation of shopkeepers, tea drinkers, lawn clippers. But I came to see them differently. What had seemed a conformist reticence revealed itself, after a time, to be an inbred, ineffable sense of fair play. They didn't need as many external rules as we did because they had internalised the standards of decency."(from the blurb) When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless, her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller, her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take breathtaking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.Often a book seems driven by one of three things to me - plot, characters, or beautiful writing. This seemed a half-and-half study of plot and characters. The plot moved at inconsistent speed (and jumped around - but more on that later), but while we stayed in one place and time, particularly in the early 30s in Germany and then in the mid 30s in London, it was well-crafted and progressed. A level of tension is well-maintained without being exhausting. I didn't see the plot twist coming at all. I was surprised when it came, who it was that was responsible, and the effects.I already protested about the back-and-forth perspective, the way we flick from Ruth as an old woman, to Ruth as a young woman during the Nazi years, to Ernst Toller at the start of the war, and back again. I still maintain that Ernst's story served no purpose at all - it was necessary that some of the information about Dora came through him, but that was really it.Young Ruth was my favourite character (I suspect this is Funder's intention); gentle and idealistic, committed and loving. I found Dora more difficult; headstrong, impetuous, strangely unconcerned with consequences. Ernst was sanctimonious and selfish, and Hans was strangely nothing. He was inspired and gregarious as a young man, but he petered out into nothingness in a new country. I loved old Ruth's observations on Bev (her carer) - a little comic relief in the other timeline.This is such a depressing book. So naturally I read it on holiday in Rome in the sunshine. But still. I can't decide whether it needed heavier editing, redirecting, or whether I was never going to like something so dark.One thing this book did teach me was the experience of living in 20s Germany. At school we only heard about the rampant inflation and needing a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread; this book managed to convey the joy and freedom and idealism and optimism of the early 20s. No mean feat.Not bad, and others will enjoy it more than I. But so, so depressing.

Dieser Roman handelt von der bewegenden Lebensgeschichte der Ruth Blatt, welche im Roman als Protagonistin Ruth Wesemann in Erscheinung tritt. Bei Ruth Blatt handelt es sich um eine deutsche Widerstandskämpferin, die zum Zeitpunkt der Machtergreifung Hitlers nach London floh, um dort alles, was sie liebte zu verlieren und schließlich nach dem Krieg nach Australien auszuwandern. Dort traf sie auf Anna Funder, welcher sie ihre Lebensgeschichte anvertraute, die Grundlage dieses Romans wurde.Die Handlung wird abwechselnd aus der Perspektive von Ruth und Ernst Toller, dem Geliebten von Ruths Cousine Dora Fabian, geschildert. Dabei spielen Ruths Erzählungen zum einen Teil in der Vergangenheit, zum anderen in der Gegenwart, in der sie sich mit dem Alter und einem allmählichen Verlust ihres Kurzzeitgedächtnisses konfrontiert sieht. Doch schnell wird klar, dass Ruth zunehmend in der Vergangenheit lebt, ihre Erinnerungen an die Geschehnisse vor ihrer Auswanderung nach Australien scheinen umso klarer zu werden, je weniger sie sich an die aktuellen Vorkommnisse erinnern kann. Ruth erzählt von ihrer Kindheit, ihrer Beziehung zu ihrer Cousine Dora Fabian, welche sie wie eine große Schwester bewundert, und ihren anfänglichen politischen Aktivitäten, bei denen sie ihren Mann Hans Wesemann kennenlernte. Toller berichtet von seinem Hotelzimmer in New York aus von seiner Liebe zu Dora Fabian. Er versucht seine Biographie weiterzuführen, welche er mit Doras Hilfe zu schreiben begonnen hatte, und Doras Rolle in dieser gerecht zu werden. Die Gemeinsamkeit dieser beiden Menschen ist immer wieder Dora Fabian, welche so entschieden für ihre Ansichten eintritt und sich scheinbar vor nichts fürchtet.Ruth schildert ihre Flucht nach London, wo sie mit einigen anderen deutschen Widerstandskämpfern, unter anderem auch Dora Fabian und Mathilde Wurm, den Kampf gegen die Nationalsozialisten aufrecht erhält. Doch sie müssen in ständiger Angst vor der Abschiebung nach Deutschland aufgrund ihrer politischen Aktivitäten leben. Schließlich ereignet sich ein schrecklicher Verrat und Ruths Welt wird in ihren Grundfesten erschüttert...Dieser Roman hat mich sehr bewegt, es ist eine der Geschichten, die in Vergessenheit geraten, weil ihre Akteure, wie hier Ruth Blatt, nur eine unbedeutende Rolle in der Geschichte spielen. Auch Ruth ist offenbar der Meinung nicht genug für den Widerstand getan zu haben und fragt sich in ihrem hohen Alter, warum ausgerechnet sie überlebt hat. Gerade deshalb finde ich es schön, dass Anna Funder diese Biographie in ihrem Roman niedergeschrieben hat, um zu zeigen, dass Ruth zwar nicht so viel erreichen konnte wie ihre Cousine Dora, dass ihre Geschichte es aber dennoch wert ist, erzählt zu werden.Trotz der Brisanz der beschriebenen Ereignisse hatte der Roman meiner Meinung nach einige Längen. Dies lässt sich vielleicht damit erklären, dass Anna Funder nur Bruchstücke der Geschehnisse von Ruth Blatt erfahren hat und um diese Bruchstücke eine Handlung konstruieren musste. Dies ist ihr meiner Meinung nach gut gelungen, alle Fakten scheinen gut recherchiert und ihre Quellen legt Anna Funder außerdem am Ende des Romans vor. Allerdings denke ich, dass es einen Unterschied macht, eine solche Geschichte von dem Menschen, der sie erlebt hat, erzählt zu bekommen oder sie in einem Roman nachzulesen. Die Informationen, welche Anna Funder für diesen Roman eingeholt hat, wirken meiner Meinung nach nicht so lebendig, wie andere und scheinen zum Teil als notwendiges „Füllmaterial“ für den Roman zu dienen.Demgegenüber zeichnet Anna Funder ein sehr lebendiges Bild von Ruth Blatt, die immer eine Metapher zur Beschreibung ihrer Umwelt und eine Weisheit auf Lager zu haben scheint, sodass man manche Schroffheit gegenüber ihren Mitmenschen leicht übersieht. Man lernt diese Frau zu mögen und bewundern, obwohl sie in der Vergangenheit machtlos gegenüber der Übermacht der Nationalsozialisten blieb. Abschließend möchte ich dieses Buch insbesondere denjenigen weiterempfehlen, die sich für Geschichte interessieren, aber auch allen anderen, da dieser Roman über eine bloße Erzählung der deutschen Geschichte hinausgeht.

Still making up my mind if I'll review this...

Wow! What superb writing! Is this a first novel? If so, one suspects many earlier learning attempts languish somewhere because this is a fully formed talent. The novel, thinly disguised over true history, is literary, thrilling and emotional. Exercise your heart and mind, and contemplate the lessons for the new century.

'All that I am' is not your average holocaust book. Anna Funder carves out a little-covered niche in time - the period before the worst of the atrocities - as the setting for her excellently written and researched book. The book's main characters are left-wing intelligenzia fleeing from Germany in the face of increasing threats by the Reich. The story is their struggle to tell the outside world of Germany's slide into despotism, as well as the individual stories of resourcefulness and incredible bravery, bewilderment and displacement. I always find books based on real life events compelling and this book is no exception. Anna Funder is to be congratulated for vividly bringing these little known individuals and their heroic deeds to life and for contributing to the answer to that enduring question about the Holocaust and other such atrocities - 'How could these things happen?'

An amazing book outlining and embellishing real events in the period between the World Wars. I was staggered to find that the characters are based on real people and their resistance work during the rise of Hitler to power.

I struggled with this one. Although the story was based on fact and compelling in its content, I found my mind wandering and not really taken to task with the character portrayals. I continued to read, hoping for some connection, but to the very end I remained nonplus over Ruth and her cousins plight. My lack of empathy is uncommon, as I usually feel deeply for those who suffered so in the hands of Hitler's Nazi Germany. I can only conclude that Funder's style does not grab at my heart with the serverity that other writers such as Nemirovsky and Schlink do.

This is a very well-written story of betrayal, bravery and its shameful opposite, cowardice. In an imagined novel about true events, acclaimed author, Anna Funder, has presented a visual of Hitler’s brutality, the political games played during his regime, and the accompanying blind eye of the world, from shortly after World War I, leading up to World War II. This book shines a bright light on the lives of those unsung heroes who bravely fought injustice but were often betrayed by those close to them who were spineless or misguided by their own fear or bigotry.The author’s use of the English language is superb. The reader is treated as an educated observer, drawn carefully into the mystery with excellent character studies and scene set-ups. Sexual images were not reduced to the erotic descriptions of some books today, but rather were beautifully drawn, tasteful, and sensitive, not meant to titillate but to educate the reader about the interaction of the characters.The book starts simply enough, with a statement that was the harbinger of things to come,“when Hitler came to power, I was in the bath…” No one could have imagined the horror to come more than a decade later. The book is told in two voices, one is Dr.Ernst Toller, a famous playwright of that time who opposed Hitler. The other is Dr. Ruth Weseman, based on the real life Dr. Ruth Blatt. It is through these two characters that the story of Dr. Dora Fabian is told. She was truly a brave, young woman, single-minded in her opposition to Hitler, who risked her life to get the truth out into the open, but the world was not listening to her or any of those like her. The world was busy playing politics. Disbelief about the unimaginable crimes against humanity, along with personal bigotry and a need for self preservation, and the fear that this unthinkable cruelty would be visited upon themselves, their families or friends, kept the public from accepting or acting upon, the magnitude of the injustices perpetrated by Hitler during his slow, but steady, rise to power.In the 20’s and 30’s, a group of Jews, members of the Independent Social Democratic Party, intent on creating a more just world after World War I, opposed to Hitler and his rising regime, left Germany, in fear for their lives, and settled in London. They were allowed to remain for three months at a time, with renewable visas, forbidden from doing anything political. They, however, were unable, without shame, not to fight back against the growing army of Hitler’s supporters, and so they disobeyed the law. In some cases, although Britain was aware of the atrocities being committed, they remanded some of them back to German custody.Ruth is quite elderly, retreating into her memories. She is a resolute woman who seems a bit cynical and also unsure or confused about why she is still living and others are not. She was once married to Hans Weseman. Ernst and Dora were acutely well suited to each other. Although they were not married, Dora loved her freedom, still, their love was constant, even if troubled, and it chronicled Hitler’s rise to power. Ernst, Dora, Ruth and Hans were all friends, members of a Socialist Party that opposed Hitler’s National Socialists. Hans, among them, is the only non-Jew.Because the book is narrated by two characters separated in the telling by several decades, the timeline of the speakers was sometimes confusing. Toller relates his experiences with Dora, beginning in the early 1920’s, to the woman working for him in the late 1930’s. At times, I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to Clara or Dora. Ruth relates her story to her caregiver, Bev, in the 1990’s and when she slips back into the 30’s, it is sometimes difficult to discern immediately. Once the rhythm is established, however, it all falls into place and we witness the author deftly moving us from a memory in the past to one in the future. For instance, Toller sets out to deliver a note to his wife, Christiane, in the 30’s, and suddenly, the narrative switches to Ruth, in the 90’s, who is also setting out to go for a walk to get some air and escape the confines of her living quarters. Both walks are followed by disastrous incidents. As Toller remembers Dora and her minimal drug use in the 20's, we are suddenly witnessing Dora in the bathroom with a hypodermic in the 30's. Then we see Ruth in a hospital, in the 90's, on drugs for pain, after she has fallen. We witness the performance of a woman, sometime in the 1930’s, as Ruth and Hans watch; she is pulling handkerchiefs out from under her rubber dress, and then, we are witnessing Bev, Ruth’s caretaker, in the 90's, asking her for the location of her rubber gloves. These scenes and so many others, truly segue seamlessly together to move the dialogue along, throughout the story.In the two narrations, one speaker is old, with memories that fade in and out, while the other, younger, in his middle 40’s, is also a bit unstable, with memories that grieve him to distraction. As Ruth dreams, Toller has visions. Their memories tell the story of this indomitable, free- spirited precursor to the woman’s libber, Dora Fabian, a forward thinker, a woman with the purest hunger to rescue Jews and those willing to fight the good cause, against the growing threat of National Socialism. It is through their combined reminiscences that we learn of their lives during the time of Hitler, of their heroism; we learn about their friends and their enemies, some that will be very surprising to the reader. Treachery came from surprising quarters. Ruth attempted to fight Hitler in any way she could, helping her cousin Dora who was really the central figure in the resistance effort. Dora and Toller attempted to spread the word about Hitler’s hateful behavior to the world. The world continued to be deaf, dumb and blind. Hitler was taking over quietly, subtly assuming more and more power, placing himself above the law, without opposition from any quarter. His grasp of politics and his skill at taking control was huge. The changes in the laws were insidious. Before anyone was aware of the changes, freedom was truly lost for enormous segments of the German population, and this was, surprisingly, even before he brought war to the world.As the book moves back and forth from the US in 1939, with Toller’s effort to immortalize Dora, by writing about her, to Australia in the 1990’s, where Ruth’s memories bring her into the present and past at will, we learn of the bravery of this small group of people and their courageous efforts, often thwarted by the highest authorities, because of their refusal to recognize what was in front of their eyes, because of politics, because of blatant anti-Semitism, and other prejudices coupled with enormous greed and envy.On p. 187 of the book, there is a statement about the fact that they underestimated that the liberation from selfhood offered by the Nazis, would have such a lure of mindless belonging and purpose, and in its essence, that statement is the crux of the explanation of the times and the rationalization of the people. Hitler offered the Germans a way out, a way to feel good again, and they simply took it and never looked back or thought about the cost.The heroism of those few who stood up to the madness of “the madman”, is simply and credibly expressed between these pages. They had no idea what motivated the people to follow Hitler and believed, if only they knew about his heinous activities, they would soon wake up to prevent his further rise to power. They were woefully naïve, although well intentioned.I was not surprised to learn of the widespread anti-Semitism, which is now common knowledge, but I was surprised to learn that England, which offered them safe haven, after a fashion, also betrayed them by sending them back for the sake of political expedience, even knowing that the Nazis had often entered illegally into countries and assassinated those speaking against their regime, and knowing that those they returned would be imprisoned or worse. The Jews were not truly welcomed anywhere but Shanghai, China. All other shores forbade their entrance without a passport and Hitler confiscated their passports to make them stateless. All of the countries were complicit in the mass slaughter, one way or another. This stain upon history will not easily be erased.