An astonishing book. The ending, ~100 pages focused on Linda and her illness, came as a shock and I read it in one go. This part is the shining star, definitely of this book, maybe of the series. He gestures towards his own incomprehensible shortcomings as a husband and father. He is failing her and he knows it. “The story of last summer, what I have just told, looks different now. Why? Because Linda is a human being and her unique essence is indescribable, her own distinctive presence, her own nature and her soul, which were always there beside me, which I saw and felt quite irrespective of whatever else was going on.” Yeah, I wept. Would be unlike me to not mention that the middle ~400 pages could have been better integrated or else accomplished in ~150, but I would’ve followed him wherever he wanted, at that point. The writing in the endish section, after hitler but before Linda,  got noticeably sloppy. That part is hard to read for how he sees Linda, too. Happy he ended the way he did and happy to have read it.