The Day My Grandfather Was A Hero by Paulus Hochgatterer (tr. Jamie Bulloch)

Review by Elodie Barnes

A few pages from the end of The Day My Grandfather Was A Hero, the narrator reflects that, ‘There are some things you don’t expect.’ She talks of the war, of the goodness and the wickedness of people, and of the unexpected beauty of a painting laid out on the summer grass. Her musings encapsulate, very simply, the heart of this story.

Like a rolled-up painting, the narrative unfolds into a world that is so much bigger than the sum of its parts: a story of a rural farming community, of the impact of war, of morals and choices and the messiness of humanity. The Day My Grandfather Was A Hero is a subtle, emotive novella that, with Jamie Bulloch’s sensitive translation, perfectly captures those moments of ordinary life where history comes very close to home.

‘They say my name is Nelli. Sometimes I believe them, sometimes I don’t.’ It’s a strong introduction to our child narrator who, in October 1944, arrives at a farm in Lower Austria as a refugee, fleeing the bombing of a nearby town. With no belongings and no memory, she is taken in by the farmer and his family. The narrative picks up the story a few months later, in spring 1945. It’s close to the beginning of the end of the war, but this only registers underneath the surface of this isolated rural community.

Exhausted by war despite not being badly affected by it, seasonal life goes on as normal: the book opens with the statement, ‘The swallows are here’, and, later on, ‘the potatoes need to go in the ground whether it’s wartime or not…’ This lends a rhythm to the prose, and a gentle tension that is occasionally, violently, pulled taut by the intrusion of war. A young Russian appears one night, a forced labourer on the run from German captivity who has nothing with him but a rolled-up canvas. He settles into the flow of farm life, but the arrival a few weeks later of a group of Wehrmacht soldiers in retreat threatens everything.

This push-and-pull tension permeates the whole book, seeping into Nelli’s language and that of the people around her: Bulloch’s translation conveys all the nuances incredibly well. Nelli’s description of sleeping next to one of the farmer’s daughters (‘…her back, which is as narrow as a young goat’s, with her head smelling of forest and her neck of milk…’) is serene, idyllic. It’s a sharp contrast to the likening of the village schoolteacher, an embittered and harsh woman, to an anti-aircraft gun.

This contrast is embodied in Nelli herself. From the beginning, she is marked as an outsider, a detached observer. She does not belong to this community, no matter their kindness towards her, and her loss of memory due to trauma is a constant reminder of the war. A mature narrator with an instinct well beyond her thirteen years, she also has an imagination that is not so much the imagination of a child as a coping mechanism. When faced with a Wehrmacht soldier at the kitchen table, for example, she imagines him in goggles, flying away in a hot air balloon. ‘Sometimes,’ she says, ‘I have to imagine such things, I can’t help it.’

The language, though, is the real strength of The Day My Grandfather Was A Hero. Hochgatterer draws the narrative like a delicately layered web, with every word earning its place. Like the long-lost painting that reveals itself near the end, layers are crafted with vivid imagery. As the tension builds through the second half of the book, the narrative also starts to take the reader down side paths. A sequence of events, labelled as ‘the most likely course of events’, turns out not to have happened: horror is averted by the brave actions of whatever ordinary person happens to be nearby.

Hochgatterer’s skill is in making this powerful instead of contrived, haunting instead of clichéd. So many war narratives ask “What would you have done?”, but here, the question is so subtle that the reader barely notices. In this community, these turning points happen in everyday moments. A single word makes the difference between life and death. It’s a compelling testament to the notion that we all have a choice: one that seems especially relevant seventy-five years on.

The Day My Grandfather Was A Hero by Paulus Hochgatterer (translated by Jamie Bulloch) is published by Hachette, 23rd July 2020

www.hachette.co.uk/titles/paulus-hochgatterer/the-day-my-grandfather-was-a-hero/9780857059512/