Alidë Kohlhaas has posted a extensive review of Günter Grass’ contentious memoir PEELING THE ONION on the Lancette Arts Journal website:

The controversial German winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature has chosen tell us a bit about himself and in the process has revealed a lot, and then again, very little. The reason for this statement is that Grass plays a mental game with his readers about his early life story and what has motivated him to be who he is. He does this game playing very artfully as he jumps back and forth between memory and speculation.

But, whilst admiring Grass’ artistry, Alidë does not let him off the hook:

A tone of resentment and even self-pity runs through the book. He far too often makes mention of the ‘Gustloff’, the German ship sunk by an overeager Russian captain with thousands of civilians as well as soldiers and nurses aboard. It was the subject of his book ‘Crabwalk’ in which he began his whining about the victimization of Germans during WWII. While this act of unnecessary carnage is regrettable, let Grass be reminded that a U-Boat attack on a civilian liner, the Athena on Sept. 3, 1939 was an unprovoked killing of civilians, the first of its kind in WWII. The sinking of the Lusitania in WWI by the Germans was the first of its kind in any modern war… Self-pity and self-justification can lead a writer down a very slippery slope, in this case a watery one.

John Irving was more forgiving of Grass in a strident defense of the author in The New York Times Book Review, but Joel Yanofsky who reviewed PEELING THE ONION for The Montreal Gazette seems to agree with Alidë:

Memoirs, the best of them, always walk a fine line between the self-serving and the self-excoriating, and while Grass is hard on himself in Peeling the Onion, he’s not hard enough, especially when it comes to the long-overdue confession at the core of the book—his time in the SS.

And so the controversy continues… Perhaps the only way to decide is to read the book for yourself...?

Click here for Alidë Kohlhaas’ review