Book #33 Charlotte

Charlotte by David Foenkinos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

'I am deeply, deeply affected by this sad, beautiful, indignant, wrenching, important book... It's stunning' Sarah Perry author of The Essex Serpent. How can I add to that. This story about Charlotte Salomon is heartbreaking - and true. I have read many books about the horrors of Naziism during the 2nd World War and their 'Final Solution'. Charlotte is different. David Foenkinos writes in prose form and it is this simplicity that makes Charlotte's story all the more lucid, inspiring and yet - awful.

Charlotte Salomon was born in Berlin in 1917. Unknown in her lifetime, she was one of Germany's great modern artists. Her greatest achievement was Life? or Theatre?. A song-play - an autobiographical series of 769 works, which she painted in the South of France while in hiding from the Nazis. Salomon died in Auschwitz in 1943, gassed along with her unborn child shortly after her arrival.

Foenkinos's achievement in researching Salomon's story is monumental. His writing has produced a beautifully told memorial of yet another victim of Nazi brutality. As a Jew in Berlin she is torn from her family and chased from her country, seeks refuge in France and pays the ultimate price. Her life.

Everyone should read this book. This exquisite book about an artist named... Charlotte Salomon.

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Book #21 Corpus

Corpus by Rory Clements
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Corpus crackles with derring-do, constitutional crisis, conspiracy, Cambridge and a maverick history professor, in a rollocking tale set in 1936, peppered with Bolsheviks, British Communists, Fascists, Blackshirts and Falangists in a potpourri of skulduggery that reminded me of the exploits of Dick Barton (unless you are of a certain age you might have to Google him!) with a whiff of Richard Hannay (although he populated an earlier era).

It’s 1936 and Europe is in turmoil. King Edward VIII wants to marry a divorcee, Wallace Simpson but the machiavellian Stanley Baldwin is having none of it. He is insisting that Edward abdicates to make way for his brother, Albert. There are supporters for the king, who see nothing wrong with his nuptial intentions and those led by the prime minister, who view this as completely unacceptable. Meanwhile, the Nazis have marched into the Rhineland, Stalin continues his murderous campaign in Russia and Spain has erupted in Civil War.

What then of two English women who attend the Olympic Games in Berlin? One of them has a clandestine meeting with a Jewish scientist. Weeks later she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. Following the horrific murders of a renowned member of the county set and his wife, our protagonist, Professor Thomas Wilde - a history master at Cambridge University - finds himself unwittingly dragged into a world of espionage. Are these deaths linked? Why does Wilde become involved? What does this have to do with the scandal surrounding the king and his mistress? Who is Lydia and what is her rôle in a conspiracy that could rock the nation?

Rory Clements cleverly intertwines actual historical events within a fictional plot that seethes with tension and suspense. Historical fiction, based on factual events, at its best. And Dick Barton would have made a great sidekick for Thomas Wilde….


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Book #4 Goodbye To Berlin

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A mention by Rick Stein about 'Goodbye to Berlin' on his Weekend In Berlin TV programme was enough to make me take a look. The Art Deco cover was enough. Here we read about Sally Bowles, probably better known as the lead character in the stage production, musical and film 'Cabaret'. The book was first published in 1939 and I am sure is at least semi-autobiographical, although Isherwood would indicate otherwise. The book contains six pieces that overlap so far as certain characters and situations are concerned. It recounts the story of the author's stay in Berlin where he gave English lessons during the period 1930 - 1933. Eloquent prose tells of Hitler's rise to power, the overt hatred of Jews, the glamour and sleaze that pervaded Berlin society, a tale of menace and a society in decay.

Christopher Isherwood was born in Cheshire in 1904 and died on the 4th January 1986. I enjoyed Goodbye to Berlin, full of anecdotes and written so well.



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