✅ Status: Read — 500 stars. But since the system only allows five, five it is.
Fantasy · Standalone novel · 1973
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Little piece of my soul
What I am offering you today, more than a review, is a piece of my life — and of my soul.
Momo is one of the books I've been recommending for as long as I can remember — and I have no intention of stopping.
Along with The Neverending Story, it was one of my childhood staples. Both by Michael Ende, as it happens. Both in those wonderful little pocket editions — I still have my original copy of Momo. It's one of the very few books I brought with me when I moved to Germany. And both, in large part, responsible for making me fall head over heels in love with fantasy literature — and for why, decades later, I'm doing my best to find my own place in that world as a writer (even though I think about giving it up every second day).
I've read and re-read it so many times I've lost count — and honestly, I'm glad I have. The last time I sat down and read Momo from cover to cover was in 2025, and I still found things I hadn't noticed before. At nearly 49. That's not something just any book can do.
And if you tell me you haven't read it — add it to your list right now. You're already late.
The story (spoiler-free)
On the outskirts of a great city, among the ruins of an old amphitheatre, lives a girl called Momo. Nobody knows where she comes from or who she is — but what everyone quickly discovers is that Momo has an extraordinary gift: she knows how to listen. Not just hear what people say. Actually listen — with her full attention and her whole heart.
Then one day the Grey Gentlemen arrive. In their grey suits, with their grey briefcases and their blue-smoke cigars, they have a most sinister plan: to steal people's time. To convince everyone that they must save it, make good use of it, never "waste" it under any circumstances — until life loses its colour, its joy, and its meaning. Momo is the only one who sees what's happening. And it will be her — with the help of her friends, the tortoise Cassiopeia, and Master Hour — who can do something about it.
What other readers say
Head over to the Amazon reviews and you'll find a very clear pattern: those who read it as children come back as adults and discover layers they never noticed before. And those who discover it for the first time as grown-ups are often surprised by the depth hidden inside what looks, on the surface, like such a simple story — such a "children's book." Where almost everyone agrees: Momo has no age limit. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.
My review (spoiler-free)
If you tell me this is a children's book and ask what a nearly 50-year-old woman is doing reading the story of Momo…— out you go. I mean it. End of conversation.
Momo is one of the most lucid and beautiful critiques ever written about the modern world. About how we've been convinced that time — which, along with energy, is one of the only two limited resources we have, and one that never comes back once it's gone — is something to be managed and optimised, rather than the gift it actually is. Time is something to be lived. Ende wrote this in 1973. We've had more than fifty years to learn. We haven't.
If we're lucky, we sometimes find ourselves in the characters of the books we read. And I have always felt a little like Momo. That odd, barefoot girl who has almost nothing but knows how to listen like no one else. And her friends — Gigi, Beppo the street sweeper, Cassiopeia, Master Hour — have been companions of mine for decades. They are as real to me now as the day I first met them.
There's a philosophy in this book that has stayed with me since childhood and that I, at my tender age of 48 and a half, still apply to my own life. On those days when you have so many things to do that you freeze like a rabbit caught in headlights, not knowing where to begin — I think of Beppo the street sweeper. When Beppo had to face an enormously long street, he did something very simple: he took a breath, made one sweep, took another breath, made another sweep. Without looking at everything still ahead. Just the next step. Breath, step, sweep. And it works. It always works.
I've read Momo most of my life in Spanish — and the translations are extraordinary, and I say that as someone who is very particular about these things. But I've also had the privilege of reading it in German, in the language Ende originally wrote it in, and that was something else entirely. If you ever get the chance, don't let it pass.
Who is this book for?
Anyone between 6 and 600 years old. Anyone who loves a good story. Anyone who feels time slipping away without knowing where it goes. Anyone who misses knowing how to really listen — or being really listened to. If any of this resonates, this book is for you.
Fun fact
You may have come across one of the film adaptations of Momo — there have been a couple. Let's put it gently: they don't do it justice. Michael Ende completely distanced himself from the 1986 adaptation. That says it all.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5
Five stars, which are really five hundred. One of those books you never forget. Ever.
Have you read it? What did you think? Tell me below. 👇
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