Review: A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones

When I found a copy of A Guide to Berlin at the beautiful Matilda Bookshop in the Adelaide Hills I was instantly intrigued. A story of six visitors to Berlin from various parts of the globe who meet in empty apartments to share their stories and to discuss their mutual appreciation for author Vladimir Nabokov, in particular his short story, A Guide to Berlin? It looked interesting. So did the hint on the back cover that there would be an act of violence and the relationship between the group would not end well. Add the fact that it was written by Gail Jones, a much respected Australian author of Literary fiction and I could not resist buying this one and reading the first few chapters in a nearby cafe. 

I was immediately taken by the beautiful prose, which as I was soon to discover was the novel's greatest strength, along with its depictions of Berlin through the eyes of Cass, an Australian who had grown up in Broome, and now found herself in Berlin in mid-winter. The two places could not be any more different and it was interesting to read Cass' reactions to her new surroundings. The stories that her companions share are utterly heart wrenching. That said, while the author writes beautifully, I did not get a great feel for the characters. Even the descriptions of the city, while relevant to Cass, don't always do the reader justice. I felt the perspective was a bit too limiting. As for the characters, I spent the whole book feeling as though I was watching them from afar, especially after the twist. It is difficult to understand how they could all be so complacent. Cass and Marco's relationship felt dull, as though they were two people going through the motions for the hell of it, rather than them having any kind of sexual or romantic attraction to one another. Ultimately, A Guide to Berlin starts strong, but falls flat. Beautiful prose cannot atone for a story and characterisation that lacks depth. That said, I've read and enjoyed a number of other novels by this author and would not hesitate to pick another of her novels up again.

Not recommended. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more