Agathe von trapp autobiography book

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etc. Now that I finished reading the book, I must say that I am quite disappointed, as this book turned out to be nothing like what I expected, and not in a good way.

First, the writing was very drab and overly simplistic to the point of being boring.

To be honest, I’m not too sure if this would appropriately fall into the memoir category because there is actually very little about Agathe herself or about her siblings. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I’m not religious or anything like that, it’s just that 1) I don’t like being preached at, especially in books, and 2) I prefer to know ahead of time if the book is going to be heavily slanted towards a particular religious perspective so I can decide whether I want to read or not.

The first was the heavy religious undertone in the book, which I guess shouldn’t really be surprising given the background of the family and the time period, but I was honestly a bit put off by the constant references to “being guided by God’s hand” or “God was watching over the family” or everything that happened being attributed to “God’s intervention and will”.

As if that weren’t enough, there was also an entire chapter dedicated essentially to “criticizing” the movie/musical where the author makes her resentment toward the inaccurate portrayal of the family (and the fact that her family never benefited financially from the musical or the movie due to a contract that had been signed when the rights were sold that prevented them from receiving royalties initially) quite known.

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Throughout the book (it felt like every couple pages to be honest), we, as the readers, were constantly reminded that this detail was wrong or that detail didn’t match or they didn’t actually do this thing or that thing – basically, it seemed that the author’s point was to reiterate that like 99% of what was in the movie/musical was false.

Instead, the book felt more like a rambling account of the history of the Von Trapp family, from the grandparents to the parents and then eventually to the children. Her memories of her idyllic Austrian home transport readers back to the time before the von Trapps came to America and reveal a close knit group of siblings who adored their gentle father and mourned the tragic loss of their mother.

I’m not necessarily trying to judge their relationship but I just thought it was interesting that the author painted such a peachy sweet, saccharine portrait of the entire family (honestly it seemed that everyone in the family was flawless and perfect, even the extended family consisting of all the aunts and uncles), but when it came to Maria, the tone was obviously different (not necessarily negative per se, but detached and less emotive).

While I was obviously disappointed with this book, it wasn’t an entirely bad experience, as some parts truly were interesting – such as the last chapter for example where the author gave a brief update on each of her siblings and what happened to them after the Trapp Family Singers disbanded.

Whether or not you are familiar with The Sound of Music, this amazing memoir is sure to capture your imagination and inspire you to read Agathe's enchanting story again.