Momo is a weird book: It clearly has the potential to be and to feel very profound. But it was never quite that for me. Maybe it’s that the capitalism criticism is just too open and too jarring when mixed with the magical elements? Maybe it’s that Momo herself, as a character, always kept her distance to me. I don’t know. It’s a good book, but it never quite reached “great” for me.
I’m sure it shaped my aversion to needlessly efficient systems, though, and Ende was definitely ahead of the curve here.
On re-read: Jesus fuck this is a good book! Moved rating from 4 to 5, because man. Man. What a book! The descriptions of the kids playing are so vivid, which I suppose is expected from the man who wrote the Neverending Story. But then everything else is so tender and touching and deep â I love it. So many quotes (see below!).
And also, like in his other books for children, never far from working through the trauma of Nazi Germany, and the shock of everything that was then, and that followed after. And it is a definite strength of the book to not make the Grey Gentlemen clearly nazis â because they’re not. They poison the air and all time with their deadly fog of boredom and depression. They’re everything that’s authoritarian and takes away your soul, your art, your freedom. Everything that makes you stressed and grey and the same as everybody else.
There’s so much in this book. The way he can put into words how children feel when they get a higher allowance to because their parents want to be left alone. How the more something is meant to be A Toy, the less fun it is to play with. (Oh and the scathing commentary on those toys and their infinite add-ons.) Children as natural enemies of that grey death of the soul may be a bit idealistic, but it may still be the best truth we have.
The way it describes how your soul withers and dies when stress and pressure forces you to compromise your job, your art, your pride â how you suddenly churn out a thousand houses looking all the same, and the only thing to think about is cutting corners and making things cheaper. (Again, see quote below, I can’t do it justice.)
And then there’s an entire spirituality; all of Master Hora is a beautiful experience. Very in line with the ending of The Neverending Story, especially the visit to the transcendent place where time grows like flowers, inside your own heart (pure bawl-your-heart-out poetry, that part).
Plot summary
Beware: full spoilers! Also probably incomplete and possibly incomprehensible.
Momo lives on her own, and makes people happy with her magical ability to listen (and to play amazing games with the other kids). But then the Grey Gentlemen take over, and once they notice how powerful she is, they take away her friends (making Beppo sad and old and stressed, and Gigi gets famous). She meets Master Hora and his magic time turtle, and in the end has to save everybody.
