THE TIN DRUM

Gunther Grass’s narrative of the bizarre life of Oskar Bronski/Matzerath/Koljaiczeck.

You read right, the character of Oskar does have, over the course of the novel, three surnames. The Tin Drum is quite possibly the weirdest book I have ever read. It is written from the point of view of Oskar, a mental hospital patient. Chronicling his family history, from the meeting of his grandparents in a Kashubian potato field at the turn of the century, we follow Oskar’s life - his refusal to grow beyond three feet tall, his autistic need to permanently drum, his ability to shatter and etch glass with his voice, the dysfunctional deaths of his friends and family, his time spent as the leader of a street gang and in a touring freak show, a spell as a successful jazz drummer and final incarceration for the murder of a nurse that he did not commit. To be honest, I simply do not know how to review this book. It has to be read to be understood, words would not do it justice. Oskar’s oblique look on life is quite, quite insane - everything from his ability to etch names onto glass using simply his voice, his indirect ability to murder both his fathers (one actual, one assumptive) during the war and then his pied piper drumming ability to make people bow to his will and, in one case, summon forth the apparitions of long dead Polish cavalry to save a man from being murdered. Coupled with the miracle of seeing a statue of Jesus drum and his fixation for both nurses and his grandmother’s four-layered skirts, Oskar assumes himself as a sane man in the madness that was living in Germany from the ’30s to the ’50s. For someone who wants to be literarily challenged, The Tin Drum is an excellent choice. For the armchair critic one word will suffice. And that word is “weird”.