What stories do you tell yourself?

This book is, more than anything else, a book about stories.

There are the stories that the other 10-year-olds make up about Pia after her grandmother dies in an Advent wreath accident one nightmarish Christmas season, stories meant to hurt and drive away someone that makes them feel uncomfortable (what do you say to someone whose grandmother explodes?), forces them to deal with the potential death of their own grandmothers some day (although probably less spectacularly). Stories spread by bullies to punish Pia, to keep her in her place, to keep her away from them: be careful, the exploding might be contagious.

There are the folktales and legends that the grandfatherly Herr Schiller tells Pia and the only other child that will associate with her after her grandmother goes up in a ball of flame, the equally-rejected, Stefan. (Aka Stinkstefan.) Tales about witches who gather in the woods that surround their fairy-tale perfect town; treasure buried under the streets and houses; hunting-mad knights who refuse to go to church and are doomed to ride the woods outside the old castle on the ridge after dark; and boys who taunt burning Fiery Man, a blazing spirit who inhabits a cave near the old castle. But most of all, tales of Unshockable Hans, the fearless folk hero who stands up to the phantoms that haunt his mill, and frees headless ghosts from their curses.

There are the stories that Pia’s parents tell each other, about why they live in the small town her father grew up in, instead of suburban England where her mother grew up. Stories about what makes them a family. And stories told behind closed doors, where Pia can’t hear them, about what is really happening when Katherina Linden – a girl Pia’s age – disappears from the heart of town during a holiday celebration. When more girls disappear, there are the stories that erupt from one parent to each other in spurts and, finally, in loud voices over dinner, about how it why it would be better to move to England, and why that wouldn’t make any sense, and who the person each of them married really is and why that person’s stubbornness is wrecking their marriage.

There are stories that teachers and policemen tell the school children about stranger-danger. Stories that Stefan’s stoner and entry-level crook brother, Boris, tells to police, to justify his own mildly nefarious after-dark activities. Stories that Pia’s British cousins tell her, when her mother sends her to England for the summer to keep her safe, about what it means for Pia to be German and for them to be British, even close to 60 years after WWII ended.

And the stories that Pia’s beloved town refuses to tell, ever, about what really happened during WWII and in the cold years just after, when there was no food – times that seem to have disappeared from history: they can remember everything that happened leading up to the war, every now and then a bomb falling, and being hungry afterwards; everything else is a blank page.

There are stories that Stefan makes up to manipulate adults into sharing forgotten gossip from the past with Pia and him. The tales he tries to get Pia to tell her mother so the two of them can go out after dark to hunt clues when the other children are being kept safe indoors. And the terrifying tale that Stefan tells Pia after he slips out of his home one night and bikes to the old castle on the ridge, to lie in wait in hopes of seeing the knight who hunts forever – and gets far more than he bargained for.

Then there are the evil stories: the black gossip spread by the old women of the town, and in particular Frau Kessel, a spiteful woman who recounts all of the sins of the past that haunt Herr Schiller’s brother, Herr Druken: he’s an unrepentant Nazi; he coveted his brother’s wife. And all the old stories that no one else will tell Pia, about the girls who disappeared long ago, after the war ended – disappearances that include Herr Schiller’s own daughter – disappearances Frau Kessel says should be linked to Herr Druken, but for some reason weren’t. Stories that Frau Kessel quietly uses to stir up the fathers of the missing girls – and idiots like Boris – and set them against Herr Druken. Stories that Pia’s mother tells her not to listen to but that Frau Kessel has no problem sharing with her young ears.

And most of all, there are the stories that Pia tells herself: about what’s really happening to the vanished girls; about how she will find the person snatching up girls her age from the town and disappearing them without a trace; about how that will make her a hero and stop the other children from gossiping about her grandmother’s death; about how that will make everything right with her parents so she doesn’t have to move to England and can stay in her beloved German hometown.

Storytelling is powerful: the stories you tell yourself about yourself can change your life. Learning to reframe events around you – so that you are not always a victim, the one that things happen to – so that you can see things from the perspective of other people, can help you make different decisions and move forward.

A small example: the cat jumps on the counter and my husband asks every time, with exasperation, why she does it when she knows it’s wrong. But she doesn’t know it’s wrong, I reply, she just knows that we don’t like it. She’s a cat; from the cat’s perspective whatever the cat does is right, whether we like it or not.

A larger example: my sweet 94-year old father-in-law, suffering from dementia, has begun imagining that his worst nightmares about his family are true. But they aren’t true and the daughter and son-in-law he lives with spend an inordinate amount of energy, arguing with him and trying to set him straight. Arguing with an elderly person with dementia isn’t helpful*: they don’t believe the stories that they’ve made up because they are mistaken or misinformed; they believe their stories because they are hallucinating so strongly that the stories feel like reality to them.

In both these cases, all you can do is find a way into the cat or my father-in-law’s reality and use that to influence their behavior.

Grant does a masterful job weaving all her stories together to move the plot forward and tell the tale. The book moves quickly – I finished it in a little over a day – and each chapter’s story builds on the previous and leads you to the next, some of them making the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Pia’s romanticized version of her town and each of the characters stand out boldly, forming easy pictures in your head. I would categorize this as horror – although there is almost no gore, aside from the exploding grandmother and the serial killer’s ultimate comeuppance – for the hair raising stories that permeate throughout the book. If I guessed the perpetrator, it was only because I’ve read too many of these books; and the why and how surprised me. I would highly recommend this one.

Do you have an example of how reframing a story you were in helped you take action and move forward? Share in the comments.

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^{*We might say that arguing with anyone isn’t helpful. Loud voices and telling the other person “what” never wins a battle. At best, the other person decides they don’t want to deal with you and capitulates to your face, then follows their own inclinations behind your back, and avoids you.}