What does pre-Nazism Berlin look like through the eyes of a British writer?
Goodbye to Berlin didn't impress me with a strong storyline or too many memorable characters. Its real value lies in its simplicity. It carries the charm of its time and borrows some from Cabaret, and it's fantastic because it illustrates the human interactions and understanding from that time. The political references are brought down to plain minimum, which highlights the personal story and how detached it can be from the events happening around. It comes to show that it's the people we meet, know, and love that make up our story - not the times in which we live.
At one point the book seems almost silly - there are all the tensions from the fraction between Communism and Nazism, there are the economic difficulties following the Wall Street crash, there are the foundations of the killing anti-semitism that will later lead to the Holocaust, and there is the narrator, who's impressed by a cabaret singer and a wanna-be actress. It's almost ridiculous. But then you continue reading, and you reach the last chapter, and you start to understand a truth about people, which is hard to explain. It's never told out right, but it's there - underlining every word and outlined in a frame of laughter. And then you remember the whole story that History tells and how only History will finish this book, which ends all too quickly.
Goodbye to Berlin didn't impress me with a strong storyline or too many memorable characters. Its real value lies in its simplicity. It carries the charm of its time and borrows some from Cabaret, and it's fantastic because it illustrates the human interactions and understanding from that time. The political references are brought down to plain minimum, which highlights the personal story and how detached it can be from the events happening around. It comes to show that it's the people we meet, know, and love that make up our story - not the times in which we live.
At one point the book seems almost silly - there are all the tensions from the fraction between Communism and Nazism, there are the economic difficulties following the Wall Street crash, there are the foundations of the killing anti-semitism that will later lead to the Holocaust, and there is the narrator, who's impressed by a cabaret singer and a wanna-be actress. It's almost ridiculous. But then you continue reading, and you reach the last chapter, and you start to understand a truth about people, which is hard to explain. It's never told out right, but it's there - underlining every word and outlined in a frame of laughter. And then you remember the whole story that History tells and how only History will finish this book, which ends all too quickly.