The German Boy by Patricia Wastvedt
The German Boy by Patricia Wastvedt is the sequel to the author’s much praised Orange Prize offering, The River.
Those wowed by the lyricism of Wastvedt’s dark début set in a Devon village may have found their patience pushed to the brink by a wait of 7 years, but they will be amply rewarded with the author’s return to terra firma with a captivating tale straddling decades.
Like a sheet of wrap from Past Times or a penpal’s treasured scrap book, a rich collage of Jungvolk lighting campfires, ration books, photos and letters in German and English hand adorns the inside cover. Beautifully packaged with contents to match, I defy your curiosity not to be piqued by the cover quote:
“So this will happen. I will inherit Karen’s son, who I hate and love before I’ve even set eyes on him.”
And so, Wastvedt introduces us to flame haired Elisabeth and her skittish, blonde sister Karen, and their early life in Peckham in the late twenties when a childhood friendship with neighbour, Rachel Ross is in its infancy.
Until 1947, where we find Elisabeth waiting with a mixture of deep-rooted apprehension for Stefan Landau to pitch up on her doorstep in his threadbare Hitlerjugend uniform, the lives of the sisters and the Jewish Ross family are inextricably linked.
The novel maps this journey in rich and convincing period detail. The spilling forth of the contents of sixteen-year-old Stefan’s suitcase – a rolled up canvas with a portrait painted by talented artist Michael Ross under a Mediterranean sky, triggers a Proustian moment for Elisabeth, a coup de foudre seemingly miles away from her Kentish life now.
As in The River, Wastvedt employs the flitting back and forth mechanism to great effect, which – if you can keep up with the diverse canvas of characters makes for a real, mille feuille of a novel.
Whether you’ve ever licked the salt from your lips in Dunwich or on the Romney Marshes, felt the sand between your toes in the shadow of the Cinque Ports town of Rye or supped in the bierhalles of Munich, you’ll amass a fair few travel stickers in the hands of this author from the comfort of your armchair – an aspect of The German Boy I really enjoyed.
The gentle characters of Eddie Saunders and dependable, kind George Manders in their English, coastal setting contrast beautifully with the intoxicating, decadent backdrop of pre-war Germany in which our protagonists soon find themselves embroiled.
High on the nascent success of the emerging National Socialist Party is louche Artur, a character who could so easily slip from the pages of an Isherwood novel. Oozing sex appeal and power, he’s one to watch.
It is ironic that the artist Michael Ross, for whom Jewish identity has been less a raison d’être than the quest to paint the perfect sky is adopted by the narcissists of Bloomsbury as their ‘Hebrew’.
Our London-born author takes us through the streets of Fitzrovia, the hidden alleyways around Percy Street, the stomping ground of Dickens and Woolf, still an artistic enclave. You can almost smell Gold Flake in the air now consumed by garlic or the aroma of Arabica beans on the Charlotte Street pavements.
Wastvedt revels in detail to anchor her novel and in sister Karen we have the perfect clothes-horse on which to lavish rapt attention. Any vintage fiend will enjoy the imagery for there are frocks aplenty. I found myself scouring Silk & Sawdust to complete my mental jigsaw.
There’s a CD I own called Let’s Bottle Bohemia. I think it’s safe to say that in The German Boy Wastvedt most definitely has. Published last month by Viking, you can buy it in paperback for £7.92, or as a Kindle eBook for £6.49.
Rating: 5/5
Recommended for: Those intrigued by sisterly dynamics (i.e. Nora and Dora or Amy and Jo March) and those who enjoy a rollicking, historical love story. There’s Schadenfreude aplenty!
Other recommended reading: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell for more sisterly strain, or Goodbye To Berlin by Christopher Isherwood for a greater insight into relationships in 1930s Germany.
Rebecca Smeaton
Great review, I am always on the look out for a good vintage era book!