The Summer of the Pike

In German novelist Richter's American debut, Anna both narrates and experiences the powerless bewilderment of her friends, siblings Daniel and Lucas, whose mother contracts cancer. As summer arrives, the boys' mother, Gisela, returns from the hospital and weakens progressively. When Gisela begins to wear headscarves, Anna asks her own mother, "Is Gisela going bald?" Informed of the cancer, Anna promises not to tell the boys. The heroine witnesses the pain endured not only by Gisela's family, but her own single mom (caring for both Gisela and the boys). Anna suffers in turn, longing for more closeness with her mother, and rekindling affectionate memories of her absent father. Daniel and Lucas cope through endless hours of fishing near the manor, in which the two families live, and follow Daniel's plan to catch a huge resident pike. "I don't believe in God anymore," he tells Anna. "I only believe in the pike. In the pike-god. And that I'll manage to catch him. All by myself. And when I've done it, then Mom will get better again!" The translation bumps just slightly in spots: dialogue garners a surfeit of exclamation points, and residents who gossip about Gisela's travails are labeled "yahoos." Inevitably, all of Daniel's delusions fall away with the last pages of this brief, quietly observed elegy to childhood's last flashes of innocence. Ages 8-13. (Nov.)