“To my left stood a
row of modern brick houses. To my right stretched an unkempt hedge. And then,
there it was, my family’s house. It was smaller than I had remembered…hidden by
bushes, vines and trees. Its windows were patched with plywood. The almost flat
black roof was cracked and covered with fallen branches. The brick chimneys
seemed to be crumbling, close to collapse…” The House by the Lake,
p.2
The Monthly Book Group descended in force on Morningside
“when frost was spectre-grey”. But it was Thomas Harding, not Thomas Hardy,
they had come to discuss.
Outside the grey spectres of Br*xit and Tr*mp haunted the
world, while the big news was that Hearts had drawn the Scottish Cup holders
Hibs at Easter Road.
[Hmmmm……I like that so much I’ll say it again… “the Scottish Cup holders, Hibs”]
The proposer had been impressed when he had gone to hear
Thomas Harding at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Pleasant, engaging and
articulate man, riveting story, great photographs. So impressed, indeed, that he had gone to buy the book…. but
the queue in the signing tent was long and he had instead gone outside to
Waterstones, and bought the book at a discounted rate...
[a discounted rate?!…..run that by me again??]
Thomas Harding, aged 48, was a journalist by background. He
had written two previous books, one of which “Hanns and Rudolf” (2013), had
been particularly well-received. He was, though, perhaps best known as a maker
of documentaries for television.
“The House by the Lake” (2015) told how Harding had returned
to his grandmother’s summerhouse by a lake near Berlin. A Jew, she had been
forced to leave to escape the Nazis. The house by the lake was now derelict.
The book tells the story of his quest to save the house, and his unearthing of
the histories of five previous families who lived in it. It shows how the
house’s history intersects with that of Germany’s tragic century – World Wars, genocide, military defeat,
occupation.
The proposer found the book fascinating. Harding was able to
weave the story together with facts from his own life. His research was very
impressive, although, as he acknowledged, he had to invent many of the details
in “faction” manner to bring the characters and events to life. He had shown
great energy in pursuing his quest. Although he did not shirk from recording
the faults and weaknesses of the people he spoke of, including family members,
he did so in a restrained and non-judgemental way. He was the objective
researcher, not the finger pointer.
The views of the group revealed a varied response. In the
red corner:
“This is a brilliant piece of very human research into a
house and its owners over a period of a century. It says so much about German
life with so many insights and a perspective that illuminates the earlier books
the Group has read about war time Berlin and the Holocaust....”
Others agreed that following a house rather than a family
was an excellent and unusual approach. It was gripping to see the twists and
turns of the house’s fate as it descended from rich man’s luxury to
doss-house. And it was remarkable
that so many historic events should take place so close to the house. For example, the notorious Wannsee
Conference, where the “Final Solution” was worked out, took place nearby on the
shores of the same lake, and the Berlin Wall went through the garden.
The themes appealed to many:
“We attach
great sentimental value to houses, not just financial value, because we live in
them as families. The story of the Wall was also gripping for me. And the book
is a timely reminder when there is a rise across the Western world of
nationalism and racism...”
Another felt that this account of the rise of Nazi racist
populism makes you aware of just how impossible it is to control events as an
individual. You only have an illusion of control as an individual, a thought
that terrified him.
“….yes, this section reminded me of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’,
where an ordinary person is suddenly arrested by the state without reason and
his world is turned upside down...”.
Another fan of the book had lived in the Potsdam area, which
made it easy to visualise the whole area covered by the book, and feel it come
alive.
However, they were now coming out fighting from the blue corner
…
“I started off thinking it would be very interesting, but
after page 40 it became less so. The author seemed not to have an opinion on
anything. There was no edge. In fact it annoyed me that he was such a nice
guy...”
Another had similarly found the earlier characters
interesting, but the post-war residents of the house were “deeply boring”. It would have been more interesting to learn
instead how Elsie and Bella had lived in Britain, and how they had come to
prosper in their new surroundings.
And, in a flurry of jabs, the history was “Readers
Digesty” and the book was all a bit ‘Tiggerish”!
Moving in with a left hook to hit the book when it was
down…. “It has a dull style, peppered with facts, and, as I read in bed, I
found I nodded off pretty quickly. It was good, but could have been shorter and
better written…”
And a right hook from another…. “Harding does detail very
convincingly the turn of the fascist screw on the Jews, but the rest is less
detailed, and no character comes alive. He is a journalist, not a novelist”.
A red corner reader who had found the book “almost a
page-turner” went over to the blue side
with the advice that the author needs to get a life and stop going back into
his family’s past. The house had become an obsession, a sort of “reverse
request for immortality”.
And more comments that the book was not particularly well
written. It didn’t particularly excite one reader, other than the insight into how
Jews felt as the seriousness of the Nazi threat began to emerge. There was no real build-up of
characters, and no scope to develop the history of the house. "The book ends up
as a fairly superficial social history of 100 years of Germany...”.
[This fist fight was all getting a bit confusing for your poor scribe. I knew I should never have started on that dry January...]
However, the contest began to subside, as the blue and red
sluggers tired. They each started to recognise a degree of substance in the views of
the opposite corner, and looked for some common ground.
“When I say ‘the whole world knows’, I really mean ‘I
think’….”
The style was precise rather than evocative, and Harding was
indeed no novelist, but he did not pretend to be. It was not all superficial,
as some of the details were quite revelatory - for example the scale of
reparations to Jewish people by Germans after the War.
The people in the house after the War might be boring, in
the sense of being “low life” or dysfunctional. But wasn’t that part of the
tragedy of the house itself, as it fell into disrepair?
Many found the account of life under Communism in East
Germany fascinating, and were intrigued by the stories of life at that time,
such as that of the drugs for children good at sports, and the incompetent spy.
And although it would indeed have been interesting to learn
more about Elsie and Bella in Britain, wasn’t the point of the book to focus on
what the house saw?
For the house by the end becomes an observer, a mute and
fatalistic observer, of the lives of its residents. And, at least for some, the
description of the final decline of the house achieved the sort of resonance
absent in much of Harding’s precise writing.
But now they had punched themselves out altogether, and left
the book behind. They were off
debating, and of course sorting out, schools education. And after sorting that
out they were on to The Donald…..
Thinking that might take a little time, your international
roving reporter started on the long journey home, fearful of grey spectres over
his shoulder…
