All That I Am by Anna Funder
Historical fiction is a tough genre. Not only does it bring with it connotations of Philippa Gregory and the thousands of Tudor imitations spawned by The Other Boleyn Girl, but there is the difficult balance of fact and fiction (ultimately the nucleus of a novel) to contend with.
How can the novel be both true to reality and do justice to the bravery and battles the protagonists had to contend with in order to be in the historical consciousness anyway, and also entertaining, opening the characters up to the vulnerabilities and vagaries of human life that is the essence of any page-turner?
Anna Funder’s début, the non-fiction Stasiland, landed in 2003 to rapt applause that continues to reverberate. ‘Brilliant and necessary’ said The Evening Standard. Funder’s ‘rare literary flair’ was praised by the Sunday Telegraph.
The Sunday Times believed it to be a ‘masterpiece of investigative analysis, written almost like a novel.’ That one little word, almost, is key, because Funder has struggled with the sideways leap from non-fiction to fiction.
All That I Am is told through the interweaving recollections of Ruth, the Jewish wife of anti-Nazi journalist Hans Wesemann, and the socialist politician Ernst Toller, dictating his memoirs in New York.
That is about all that is clear. As the novel progresses, so these threads get tattier, and the reader is left confused as to whether they are in 2005, 1939, or 1933, in Sydney, Berlin, London or New York, and ultimately, confused about the objective of Funder’s narrative.
The central character is Dora Fabian, Toller’s muse, and despite the words on the page describing a heroic, driven, defiant coil of action, she never really comes alive. Which is a shame, given the outcome of the book.
It’s history, therefore I’m not giving anything away by suggesting the ending is less than happy. Google it. The story is sensational as it is, and the narrative unfortunately stifles its brilliance, rather than brings new gloss and magic to a tale of bravery and heroism.
It’s not a bad piece of writing, and the Ruth in Sydney chapters are highlights of the novel, the disintegrating body of an old lady being outwitted by her sharp and funny mind.
One of her first sentences is the astute ‘It is entirely possible to watch something happen and to not see it all’, and this is the feeling I have with All That I Am.
Upon reaching the end I know a bit more about Ernst Toller, I’ve read some satisfying sentences that have been worthy of corner folding, and have smiled and shivered at the glimpses of universal humanity dappled throughout, such as Toller’s assertion that ‘so much of love is curiosity, a search in the other for some little piece of self.’
Early on in the book, describing her lust from afar, Ruth says of Hans ‘I know it’s possible to fall in love with someone by falling in love with their writing, because I already had.’
Not that I think she’ll mind, but on the back of All That I Am, Anna Funder won’t be making it in to my top ten crushes of the week. Although I might go and check out Stasiland…
Published last week by Viking, buy All That I Am in hardback for £10.02, paperback for £8.09, or get the Kindle edition for £6.49.
Rating: 3/5
Recommended for: Lovers of non-fiction.
Other recommended reading: Get the factual background in Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder, read about a journalist in Sarajevo in The Girl in the Film by Charlotte Eagar, and try the fictional account of a twenty-year-old woman invited to stay at Hitler’s Bavarian retreat in Eva’s Cousin by Sibylle Knauss.
Francesca Baker
Stasiland is brilliant, heart wrenching stuff, esp if like me you knew nothing about East Germany after the wall went up.