Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything
**Originally posted @ ReadingDiva's Blog - Rating 4.5 of 5REVIEW: Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything is a great love story. One that left me wondering at what point in life do we know when love has arrived and how thin the line between love and lust really is. This story takes place in Germany during the last days of the German Democratic Republic. Maria a 16 year old girl is still trying to find herself in a changing world. There is no longer a wall separating the Eastern from the Western Germany and Maria finds herself growing in a society that is changing dramatically, and around her people and society are moving towards unison.
After meeting Johannes at a protest rally, Maria moved to the Brendels’ farm and was now living with Johannes. While she was trying to adjust to her new home Maria starts to questions her role with her new family and her future. Though she was in her final year of school her interest was slowly disappearing and she finds herself enjoying the stories she finds in her books more than attending school.
As she passes her days in the farm helping and learning things she meets Henner, a rough 40 year old man whose reality has roughen him up and has damaged him in unexplainable ways. As Maria start experiencing a certain attraction to Henner and him towards her, she starts to discover things she didn’t feel before. Her inexperience and curiosity slowly brings her into his arms. It is then that they embark into a love affair that at times is violent while other times raw and passionate.
“He lay awake at night, desiring her, and he had her.” I look over at Johannes, who’s still asleep and knows nothing. I ‘m utterly ashamed, and yet – I keep the note.
As things changes around them in a promise of a better life, Maria understand that many of those changes can be consequential to her, Johaness is planning a future with her but in terms Maria plans a future that does not include him. For Maria life begins and ends with Henner, she is experiencing changes within her, the way her body and heart reacts to Henner isn’t the same as when she is with Johannes. Maria’s life changes but while the changes brings hope and contentment those changes also bring awareness. They are both aware of the consequences of their affair, her immaturity at times shows by her reactions and actions. Maria realizes that her heart and body reacts different when she is with Henner her sense of loyalty and compassion for her boyfriend Johannen pushes her into a deeper state of deceit. Maria give herself to Henner but not without realizing that by doing so everything has changed, she isn’t the same 16 year girl who she once was, she has now become a woman who looks into an uncertain future. Her desires and needs all include Henner, but while she dreams and wishes them to be together forever, she also wonders if the dream she is now living will end soon.
I think this story clearly shows us how difficult and different living in Germany in the 1990s was, not only for young teenagers but for a society that found itself gearing towards a new era of unison and development. The author did a superb job giving us a story in which love transcend age but not without consequences and judgement. Maria’s curiosity and wonder about the people’s past and secrets kept her self evaluating. Her interest in what they thought, what they felt and what drove their passion was a times beautifully explored. Maria however understood that sometimes some secrets are better left unknown and untold, especially when she wasn’t ready to share her own.
As Maria’s affair with Henner progresses so did the difficulties of keeping their affair going and in secret, her sense of deceit did not sit well with her and her feeling of guilt weighted heavily. I found the passion between these characters deep and raw, they were driven by the pure force of their attraction and experiences but they were also experiencing a new high which neither of them felt before.
The story narrative is fantastic, the author exposes a subject which may not sit well with many, a relationship between a teenage girl and an adult man is more than enough to bring more than one argument to the table. How can there be passion and love between them when the experience of one is as great as the inexperience of the other.When is love enough to justify aggression and violence. Nowhere in the story did the author forced these experiences on Maria, the story flawlessly shows a natural attraction between Maria & Henner. The story follows a natural rhythm, an affair that starts as sudden and it ends, a story in which characters have the need to experience love, lust and loss. The relationship between these two characters is told in such way that the reader can’t help but feel understanding and longing without judgement.
The reader will feel compelled to like Maria, her innocence as well as her desires brings us back to our younger years where curiosity and longing took us in path that weren’t always the right one. This is one of those stories one keep coming back to because it explores the reality of a young girl trying to find her in in a society that has been awaken into a reality of unison and acceptance. The reality of a girl whose eyes have been open to experience unknown to her, where her body and soul crave for something forbidden, and her heart brutally exposed to the ups and downs that love always offers.
