the vanishing of katharina linden by helen grant

At each one I saw the same faces: our neighbors from the Heisterbacher Strasse, the parents who gathered at the school gate every lunchtime, the ladies who served in the local bakery. The passing of the seasons was marked by festivals that the whole town attended: Karneval in February, the cherry fair in the summer, the St. I remember my hometown as a place with a powerful sense of community, which was sometimes comforting and sometimes stifling. But in a small town-well, small towns everywhere are rife with gossip, but in Germany they raise it to an art form. Besides, in a city you are anonymous the chances of being picked out as Kristel Kolvenbach’s granddaughter would be virtually zero.

If we had lived in the city-well, I’m not saying the event would have gone unnoticed, but the fuss would probably only have lasted a week before public interest moved elsewhere. And had I not been born in Bad Münstereifel. My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded. Helen Grant: The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

The vanishing of katharina linden by helen grant