Hitchhiking: Twelve German Tales

In this slim volume of stories, told in a reportorial style, Eckart skillfully evokes the pk dejection that permeated East German society under communism. Often narrated in first person by women, these stories depict people living on the outskirts of society--widows with dwindling pensions, disgruntled laborers, restless students. Eckart captures the melancholy mood of the districts in which these outcasts live: ``the walls are mangy as an old street dog and so squeezed together there's no end to the gloom in the streets. . . . The children are still pale after the hottest of summers . . . in this quarter, where they say the rent is collected with a revolver. . . .'' Eckart also has an eye for details that create character (an old pensioner wears ``checkered stockings full of large holes'' and her ``features are empty from years of waiting for things that never happen''). But because she's less concerned with plot than with documenting a vanished era, some of her stories are underdeveloped. This collection first appeared in East Germany in 1982. Eckart, whose subsequent works were banned by the communists, later defected to the U.S. (Apr.)