Two boys are born on the same night in the
same hospital in Berlin in 1920. One is the only surviving twin of Frieda
Stengal; the other is an instant orphan, his single mother, estranged from her
family, dying in childbirth. Could, would, Frieda - after all she was expecting
to go home with two babies - give the orphan a home? She and husband Wolfgang agree and it is all done
above board, paperwork completed and lodged officially. What could go wrong?
Only one thing – Frieda and Wolfgang are
Jewish while the cuckoo in the nest is pure Aryan; and as the Nazis come to
power in the following decade and unveil their hateful credo, trouble brews for
the Stengal family.
Into their teens the boys are unaware that
they are not twins. Yes, they are different; one thoughtful and bookish, the
other wilful and looking for action, but that’s just personality isn’t it? They
also have much in common – a determination to fight back against the Nazi oppression
and, more personally, a shared obsessive love for the same rich Jewish girl and
a shared indifference for an adoring poor Aryan one. Never mind love triangle, this is a love
tetrahedron.
It all plays out over the decades. The Jews
are dead men walking; the Aryan boy could be given up and saved, but that means
him giving up a culture, parents, a brother and the girl.
The main strand is the straight
chronological account of the Stengal family up to and including the Second
World War. Interspersed is the narrative of one of the brothers (which one?) in
1956 London, who has received first word in ten years from one of the girls
(which one?).
It is a rattling good yarn (though it takes
inspiration from Elton’s own family history), well plotted and well researched,
which gives an unsettling account of drip fed anti-Semitism in pre-war Germany
while presenting individual Jewish resistance in a more positive light than the
norm. Some of the dialogue rings a tad modern for the era, but that may be
unconventional rather than inaccurate.
It is long at 500+ pages, but reads a good
deal shorter being both informative and entertaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment