Bette Greene – Morning Is A Long Time Coming Book Review

Bette Greene – Morning Is A Long Time Coming
Book Review

By Esther Deborah K.

Morning Is A Long Time Coming is just basically a cliche way of authors to satisfy the readers’ longing to meet the beloved characters again. It’s a sequel that bridges Patty Bergen’s nature as a child towards an eventful journey to her maturity. This is bascially some kind of created reflection of herself which transitioned her childhood into adulthood. I’m glad Bette Greene created this continuing story because it allows Patty to reach a wider scope of the world, seeing that one life’s obsession cannot entirely be fulfilled just because it haunts her childhood days.

[SPOILER ALERT]

The main plot of this story talks about a 19 year old Jewish girl, Patty Bergen, who set out to more to find out about the Anton Reiker, a Nazi soldier whom she helped to escape when she was 12 years old.  Patty wanted to find more about Anton's background and family in Germany, especially  Deborah Reiker, Anton’s mother.

It’s been 6 years since Anton passed away after shot dead in New York. Labeled as ‘Jew Nazi lover’, Patty Bergen grew up as a young woman who just graduated high school. She was determined to go overseas, which is Europe, although her family strongly opposed it.

With her graduation money, she set sail to Paris and met a young photographer and English instructor, Roger, whom she fell in love with. By his gentleness and passionate love for Patty, Roger opened up a whole new world for her. Both became closer through the four months of Patty’s stay in France.

Later when Roger discovered Patty’s main intention to go to Germany, he was very much outraged and hurt. They separated to their own ways after Patty decided to leave for the ex-Nazi country. Patty Bergen was disappointed to learn that she was 7 years late coming to Göttingen; Deborah Reiker was already dead. After her unsuccessful trip to Germany, she returns to France to be reunited again with the warmhearted Frenchman, Roger.

What I liked best about this sequel is that Greene allows the readers to experience another world with the cheerful Roger. I was pretty surprised myself when Roger suddenly entered the picture, slowly replacing Anton Reiker into Patty’s lonely life. It was nice of Greene to create a good natured character, which brought more colors to the story as well as to the reader’s cheeks.

Honestly, when I started to read Morning Is A Long Time Coming I thought it was much different from the first book, which is a little bit boring. The beginnning was rather cold and plain, unlike Summer of My German Soldier with the idea of an exciting love story that driven me to flip the pages till the long-awaited climax. As soon as I finished the first book, I wondered what’s in it for the readers in the next sequel, since Anton Reiker had passed away and Patty was left as a weak, heartbroken little girl. I found out that Morning Is A Long Time Coming was trying to fulfill reader’s expectation on how a romance novel should be, because the previous book was highlighted as more of a life story peppered with glimpses of love, bitterness and an astonishing child abuse.

How Patty Bergen viewed herself was similiar like Anne Frank described her life in The Diary of A Young Girl. Patty and Anne, both of them were trying to prove their existence in the family and put down the underestimations that were attacking them. Both have the same problems: being compared to their siblings, regarded as someone incapable of doing great things, being so talkative, oppressed with racism issues and were too hard on themselves. Despite all their weaknesses, the situation allows their personalities to be shaped as someone strong and have a great deal of fighting spirit to prove their self-worth to the readers, either from their actions, thoughts and expressions through their writing skills.

However, in my personal opinion, this book exposed too much of Patty Bergen’s internal soliloquys expressed in numbers of paragraphs. It caused me to skip reading them because it took a long time to reach the climax of the story, and I grew weary of listening to Patty’s complaints about herself and her brooding thoughts. I can understand Greene was making reflections of her own self, that she were the Patty Bergen in her story (as she wrote the opening affidavit on Summer of My German Soldier).  

Overall, I regard Morning Is A Long Time Coming is a pleasant experience for every young adults who longs for an escape between history, self-discovery and romance. It’s a passionate, unforgettable work of literature that made me long for Paris, as if I already carved my own history there along with Patty Bergen, Roger and Anton Reiker.