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zefrog's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is the first instalment of a loose trilogy of books centred around the same building and covering roughly the second half of the 20th century. In this volume, the building, like its inhabitants and Berlin as a whole, is reeling in the aftermath of the Second World War. In a post-apocalyptic landscape of crumbled and crumbling façades, where death is still looming, human beings are trying to survive, while dealing more or less successfully with the emotional repercussions of what they have just been through and their older tragedies.
The titular character, Kasper Meier, an older gay man literally scarred by his past, exists in this Hobbesian dystopia, where a man is a wolf to another man, and knowledge is power, but has all but given up on living. However the teetering façade of his own dour self-protective persona is about crumble too, and, after a winter of the soul, he is about to know spring, literally and metaphorically, just as Berlin is about to experience some kind of renaissance.
Couched as a mystery, this is a story of unresolved grief, endurance, and platonic love that manages to keep the reader engrossed despite relatively little action. Fergusson is great at transcribing the protagonist's paranoid helplessness conjured up by the events he faces in the book and the deleterious anarchy of the bombed-out city. The short chapters describing the murders that interspersed within the narrative are particularly successful in their poignancy, and almost work as discrete short stories.
Despite its difficult themes and lugubrious atmosphere, this is, however, as its title implies, a broadly positive and hopeful novel, that is surprisingly enjoyable to read.
The titular character, Kasper Meier, an older gay man literally scarred by his past, exists in this Hobbesian dystopia, where a man is a wolf to another man, and knowledge is power, but has all but given up on living. However the teetering façade of his own dour self-protective persona is about crumble too, and, after a winter of the soul, he is about to know spring, literally and metaphorically, just as Berlin is about to experience some kind of renaissance.
Couched as a mystery, this is a story of unresolved grief, endurance, and platonic love that manages to keep the reader engrossed despite relatively little action. Fergusson is great at transcribing the protagonist's paranoid helplessness conjured up by the events he faces in the book and the deleterious anarchy of the bombed-out city. The short chapters describing the murders that interspersed within the narrative are particularly successful in their poignancy, and almost work as discrete short stories.
Despite its difficult themes and lugubrious atmosphere, this is, however, as its title implies, a broadly positive and hopeful novel, that is surprisingly enjoyable to read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Rape, and Murder
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