”The Undertaking" by Audrey Magee - review

 “The Undertaking“ by Audrey Magee:

Another novel by Audrey Magee, her first, after I’ve read her second, The Colony.

I admit that I enjoyed The Colony much more. Not because it is a better book or better written or better in storytelling or better in any which way. The Undertaking is a good book, a very good one. It is in contrast to The Colony just so sad, so awfully, hurtfully honest, relentlessly sad in the way it shows what miserable, egotistic creatures we humans are, so easy in forgetting and throwing overboard former believes and goals, so easily ready to leave behind our sense of moral for the promise of security, wealth, power and personal well-being.

This is the second book in a row I have read now that deals with themes related to warfare and survival. It’s not that I don’t see the necessity to remind people that once there had been different times. Books like this are necessary. They must hurt. They must drive home at least a little of the sorrow and hurt and devastating loss people experienced at those times. We live in comparatively secure, peaceful times here in Germany, now. Although the war in the Ukraine is going on for almost 5 weeks now and the images which are dealt to us via the news are in no way any softer or less hurtful than the tales in this book. Maybe that is why this novel has had an additional strong impact on me and left me, temporarily, with a sense of hopelessness. Shall we ever learn?

It is shortly after the beginning of Second World war, Germany. Peter Faber, out on the eastern front, is married to Katherina Spinell in a ceremony carried out by an army chaplain, a photo of Katherina serves as proxy while she attends a similar ceremony in Berlin with a photo of Peter. They marry both for very different reasons. They have never met before but he wants leave from the front and she wants a widow’s pension in case he dies. 

When they, on his leave, do meet, they are both surprised that they instantly like each other and fall in love. Peter, after an extended leave, has to go back to the front with her promise that she’ll wait for him and she stays behind in the apartment she shares with her parents, in Berlin, awaiting the birth of their child and his return.

But then the war goes on, not at all as planned and we follow Peter’s arduous struggle through Russia, the fighting, the killing, the siege of Stalingrad in the terrible Russian winter and all the inhuman acts, all the atrocities which were committed on both sides and which come with war. In stark contrast to that we follow Katharina on her well-pampered way in Berlin, protected at first by the Nazi friends of her father and her husband. We learn of the everyday cruelty, not felt as such by her, towards Jews. We learn of how easily and unthinkingly people in favour of the Nazis could take over the lives, the apartments, the belongings of Jews who had been deported.

Then times change for the worse in Berlin, too. The war is drawing to an end, Katharina’s by then 2-year-old son whom his father never saw, dies of meningitis and she is raped by the Russians after Berlin had been taken. Peter, after almost 9 years away in Russian captivity, returns home to a wife who still waits for him in the old apartment. But although both are delighted to see each other everything has changed. She meanwhile has an 8-year-old son as a result of the rape and Peter is unable to adapt to the new circumstances and leaves her and Germany.

The narration is often told in a disconcertingly deadpan tone, exposing and condemning in its simplicity and more brutal in its impact for that. It highlights the moral blankness of both, Peter and Katherina, but it also, mercyfully puts their victims at some remove. 

The novel does not plead for understanding or sympathy for it’s characters. The characters' inner lives are not what matter. We only come to understand how they came to walk the paths they did. Mostly what Peter and Katharina experience is irritation that thlngs aren’t developing as good as they imagined them to be. We find it hard to feel sympathy for them. The only solace the reader might get is that both, Peter and Katharina, in the end seem to understand that after what they did, which believes they followed and what they supported, there really cannot be hope of forgiveness. 

This novel serves as a poignant, relentless reminder of the struggles, the ruthlessness and the atrocities of Second World War and its aftermath. It is also a timely reminder, sadly proven by the Ukrainian war, that atrocities, torture and floods of refugees are not a thing of the past.

It is not a friendly view nor a friendly book. But it is a good one.

#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry