Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wake up and smell the glühwein!, 18 Dec 2007
From the very first page of Planet Germany to the very last (and I read it in 2 days, annoyed by the interruptions of daily routine!) I was transported into that rambling farmhouse in Meerbusch, sitting around the kitchen table or the pigsty-turned-office, catching whiffs of coffee, beer, cat poop or all three, chatting with the motley crew of neighbours, admiring the rambling grape vine outside, and laughing my head off. Cathy Dobson's vividly visual writing style has that magical ability to make the reader part of the story so you giggle, belly-laugh, cry or rant in tune with all that befalls the characters. I thoroughly recommend Planet Germany as one of the funniest and most heart-warming stories I have read in a long, long time; whether you have a connection with Germany or not, this book is an utter delight.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great little book, 15 Feb 2008
A chaotic but likeable English family take us for a warm and amusing peek at German culture. I say amusing, actually what I mean is hilariously funny, but whats nice is you never really feel the 'joke is on the germans' if you know what i mean. Highly reccommended
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
All so obvious, 23 Oct 2008
With a string of 5-star reviews, I feel a bit of a party pooper, but having bought the book as much on the back of these reviews as on the subject, I do feel the need to counterbalance some of the unremitting enthusiasm for what, for me, was largely a disappointment. The premise is a great one, the story of a family integrating into German culture (the travel literature shelves are surprisingly light on books on Germany). Initially the book was a thoroughly enjoyable read: self-deprecating humour, short snappy chapters, a series of amusing anecdotes. But this rapidly began to pall, as all the stereotypes fell into place. Far from integrating, the author seems determined to maintain her Britishness, and the Germans (aside from immediate friends, many of whom aren't actually German) became figures of fun, with silly pseudonymic names such as Officer Georgeous, Dr Bier, Frau Grimm (school teacher no less). Apart from Cathy Dobson's business partner and her family, we learn next to nothing about their real characters. As for the anecdotes - they get more and more obvious and predictable. Well yes, if you leave food lying around in a house of cats, it gets eaten. Yes, if you walk close behind a horse, it'll defecate on you and you'll smell. And I got so bored with the ongoing shenanigans with trying to cook in a British style (the author seems to take pride in an inability to cook, but then it's so easy to make fun of one's cooking). Integrating? Not really.
There are some areas of real interest: I enjoyed the occasional insights into being a school parent, and I was interested in how the children were dealing with their bilingual culture, but towards the end, it all merged into description after description of parties and festivals (the family enjoy their outdoor parties).
Other reviewers will obviously disagree with me, but this felt like an excellent opportunity wasted in the desire to be funny, and in the end left me feeling I didn't really learn that much about German culture or German people, although my expectations on this may simply come from what was to me misleading blurb. Certainly, the Dobson family come across as very likeable and amusingly accident prone, and the author as able to tell a good after-dinner story, but, in contrast to the reviewer who reckoned this the only book they'd recommend from the past year's reading, I'd have to say this is one of the few that really didn't work for me.
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