I didn't manage to complete this - gave up 120 pages in (it's 700 pages long.)
Set in Brandenburg in Christmas 1812, Storm gives beautiful and evocative descriptions of the world of a small estate and the people around it. In the outside world, we are aware that Napoleon is withdrawing from Moscow - but only through comments made.
Basically I just couldn't go any further as nothing happens. The young people of the estate meet up and spend a whole chapter comparing and contrasting two Prussian poets for example. There's a well-written chapter describing a local dwarf...surely she's entering the plot now??...no (well not yet anyway.)
Was I being difficult? I read the introduction which informs me 'until the final quarter...there is hardly any action at all. So little that when a trivial incident occurs in the thirty-first chapter, the author entitles the chapter "Something Happens." ' When I saw all the 'gratuitous information' I was to be treated to in future chapters: a reading of an account on the Battle of Borodino, a playbill reproduced in French for a dramatic performance, lond stretches of aimless talk...I felt life was too short.
The reader should also note that there are 33 pages of notes at the back to which one constantly needs to refer; battles, poets, places, ancient tribes. Knowing little about Prussia, I was checking names out on every page.
Although deliberately written to depict 'a whole society at a particularly "historic" moment of the past,' and although it's beautifully written, it's not for me. ( )