Rating: 
Summary: All men should read this book
Review: This book tells the story of Paul Pokreife, a journalist living in modern Germany. Paul is collecting information on the sinking of a German cruise ship during WW2, but this book is about so much more than that. It is about living in a country that is stangling under a political correctness that shuts off discussion of the past and oppresses its people in the present, producing ugly and frightening effects.For me, the most touching scene is during Konrad's (Paul's son) trial, when the judicial system heaps blame upon Paul for the crime of being a male! Paul accepts the misandrist abuse, crushed as he is by the women in his life, and sees his son taken away, even more thoroughly destroyed by the system than himself. This is a touching book that all men should read.
Rating: 
Summary: Ideas better than the plot
Review: This novel shows Grass curious as ever about the role of Germany since WWII, but growing weary of fiction and the unending debates in the real world. The plot with Konny and David never holds any surprises, and the trajectory of the novel rarely rises above the mundane. Full of detail about the ship and the three men who intersected to bring about its tragic end, you find much to learn about the times, but this could have been a better non-fictional work of journalism by Grass. The clumsy author-narrator dichotomy appears listless, and the Grandmother talks, in the translation of her Low German, like some intellectual's attempt at Ma Kettle.
A true account such as Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier or a history such as Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin, 1945 give context that readers curious about the collapse of the Baltic front will gain much from. Grass' short novella fails to convince as fiction, even if much of it is borrowed from--and better left as--fact to confront and contend with and against.
Rating: 
Summary: It will never end
Review: Within this novel, the narrator effectively uses the characters personal observations of, as well as documents from, the past (of whose accuracy we cannot be completely certain) to obtain an understanding of the characters present day condition and motivations. The book demonstrates how remembrances (whether true or false) of this era of German history can provide useful fodder, fodder which forms our personal relationship with the past and which can guide or justify behavior in the present. And how the resulting behavior (e.g. pro or anti skinhead movements), can in turn, provide more "useful material" to be further manipulated by either. "It will never end". Translation could have been better, thus 4 and not 5 stars.
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