Cat and Mouse (original 1961; edition 1961)

A little bit of Dog Days which sprouted and grew a life of its own. A worthy successor to The Tin Drum. Thoughts on youth and war in Danzig. ( )

I suspect some readers coming at Grass after reading (or seeing the movie of) the Tin Drum might be confounded by the dense imagery of this slender volume. Word pictures simultaneously point at, and deflect attention from, the ´moral´ of the story. Others have referred (very perceptively) to this as Grass´s obliqueness, but ´Grassness´ might be the word to best describe it. In some ways it´s like reading a few feet of a core sample drilled through a thousand years of German/Polish history, and attempting to discern from that not only plot, but the grand themes of the time. In an odd way this book is more enjoyable when read after both Tin Drum and Dog Years. Characters and hints of plot from outside this particular book wander on and off stage, weaving Cat and Mouse into the middle of Grass´s Danzig trilogy and Grass´s moral history. ( )

I just gave this book 1 star because I didn't really like the story and it didn't end right. ( )

I have this book in the Dutch translation. It's the second part of the Danzig trilogy, telling about the author's youth. The Tin Drum is part one of this trilogy.
This book tells the story of The Great Mahlke, a classmate the writer was infatuated with as a teenager, against the backdrop of World War II. From the beginning the writer hints at tragedy to come, but everything is told very matter of factly, the way a teenager would tell it. Grass is a great and respected writer, Nobel Prize winner, and yet, I did not like this. It's hard to say why. I found it hard to relate to the characters, and felt no great urge to "know what happened next" either. Perhaps it has lost too much in translation? I think it is just me: I did not like The Tin Drum either.” ( )

I picked this up at a Bookcrossing point in a pub. It's really short, but felt longer, I found it quite a tedious read. It presents aspects of Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of a group of children. The central character, Mahlke, is an oddball that the others look up to, but also find weird. I just found him weird. I finished it because it was so short, but otherwise would have abandoned this halfway I think. ( )