You may also smell it.’ She dragged her finger across the cake plate and held a creamy dollop up to my nose.Įven when he has to start school, she won’t let the boy alone, insisting on sitting at the back of the classroom, from which position she interrupts his lesson with advice (usually incorrect) on how to solve his maths problems. You can eat it with your eyes, which is healthier anyway. ‘ Do you no longer need your pancreas? This kind of food is for normal people. I knew the answer so well that I could recite it to myself.
I believed her immediately without even asking if I could try a slice. What do you think ? It tastes divine, you must believe me’. ‘Take a good look at it from every angle. Every year she presents him with a giant cake the boy knows he will never get to taste.
His digestive system cannot cope with rich foods she decides, so all he gets are steamed vegetables and plain barley and oats. The boy suffers even more from her strict control of his diet. She drags him from one doctor to another, becoming enraged when they disagree with her view of the boy’s health. The poor kid has a miserable time of it because Margo is convinced that he is a sickly boy, prone to every possible germ and too fragile to be allowed to play outside the flat. It’s six year old Max who narrates My Grandmother’s Braid and allows us to discover the story of this dysfunctional family. It’s a pretence at confidence, her grandson senses, hiding her deep fear that one day she will be unmasked as an imposter and returned to the Soviet Union. She does however attend the synagogue and honours the Shabbat by coiling her (dyed) braid atop her head and adorning her best dress with silk flowers. A confirmed anti-Semite, the only neighbours she will have anything to do with are two other Russian emigres, the piano teacher Nina and daughter Vera. Much to Margo’s disgust she is housed in a crumbly apartment among other Jewish families. In her eyes they’re untrustworthy, eat terrible food and their doctors and teachers are incompetent. Having arrived in Germany, she develops a strong aversion to the country’s inhabitants. Under the guise of an exaggerating a Jewish family connection Margo managed to get refugee status for the three of them so they could escape the crumbling Soviet Union for pastures new. It’s the red-haired former prima ballerina who takes all the decisions in this household. Margarita Ivanova, (Margo) is in fact a domestic tyrant, a forceful, stubborn Russian who barely has a good word to say about anyone and utterly dominates her meek husband Tschingis and grandson Max. The grandmother in Alina Bronsky’s novel is no lovable senior citizen. If you open My Grandmother’s Braid thinking to find a tale of a sweet old lady whose perfectly woven plait hangs down her back, within a few pages you’ll be forced to re-think those expectations.
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