May Staff Picks!

Alex's Pick

Anna by Mia Oberländer

With delightful illustrations, colored according to timeline, we follow three generations of women in a family, all appropriately named Anna. You have Anna 1, the matriarch whose height, albeit a bit above average, falls comfortably in the spectrum of “normal.” Then you have her daughter, Anna 2, whose genetics conspired against her, resulting in a hyperbolically long-limbed, slouching existence. And then, of course, there’s Anna 3, just as tall as her mother, and just as cursed to feel abnormal due to her large size confined to a tiny town. 

This book surprised me. It somehow feels both modern and fantastical, the latter partially due to the German village the Anna’s reside in and their odd dialogue. Anna is less of a story and more of an obvious allegory, so if subtly is what you’re looking for, you may be disappointed. However, I find that literary lessons still have virtue when you can clock them from a mile away, and it made reading this book more interesting. Without the thread of allegorical feminism, the narrative would have felt scattered and confused. 

Of course, nothing is perfect, and a critique I have is that in an allegory about women who don’t “fit in” taking up too much space, leaving out the existence of plus-sized women feels like a fairly glaring omission. If Anna 1 is somewhat tall, and Anna 2 is very tall, then it could have been an interesting way to further the conversation by making Anna 3 very tall and perhaps a bit less slim. In this way, we could have seen more examples of the cyclical nature of internalized misogyny traumatizing each generation in turn. Anna 2 would have related to Anna 3’s tall-ness, but not her wide-ness, and inadvertently transferred her own mother’s judgment further down. Still, it’s quite an enjoyable read.

There’s a particular scene towards the end where one of our Anna’s finally unleashes her pent up rage, and it’s an illustrative treat of wordless feeling, done so well that it felt cathartic just to read–or should I say, watch. Fire breathing, town-destroying female rage is what I’m talking about! If any of that speaks to you, like it does to me, then you must check this one out.