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molol's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
Interesting way of retelling his youth and time in Berlin when everything is uncertain and everyone he meets has a different story and reason for being in Berlin. The ending of the Landaurers story is shocking even as it hints throughout about the Nazis - it hits that people he knows and are friends with are really affected.
joeldrama's review against another edition
4.0
six snapshots. six insights into Isherwood's time in Berlin. This book really shows the breadth of experience and connection that Isherwood had with Berlin.
katlev010's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
livlaughlit's review against another edition
dark
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Isherwood's collection of vignettes introduces us to a memorable cast of quirky, amoral, individualistic characters in the last days of the Weimar Republic. The book, much like the characters we meet, is at once decadent and frugal - he writes economically but the content is sumptuous. It is an honest, bleak, and prescient account of a people submitting, both wilfully and reluctantly, to an oppressive, fascist leadership, that bears reiterating for current and future generations.
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
This isn't a novel, nor is it a series of short stories; it isn't a diary and it is clearly fiction so it isn't a memoir. It is a somewhat ramshackle portmanteau of vignettes designed to show Berlin between 1930 and 1933. The author appears as the narrator, though I suspect he is a first-person character, and in the second paragraph he states: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." (A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930) He isn't as passive as he pretends; on the other hand he is remarkably tolerant of the wide variety of people he encounters, and he stays scrupulously neutral for most of the book (not perhaps in the final section) despite the period covered by the book being a time of tremendous social and political upheaval which culminated in the rise of the Nazi party. The Guardian said: "Reading this novel is much like overhearing anecdotes in a crowded bar while history knocks impatiently on the window." George Orwell called it "brilliant sketches of a society in decay."
Much of the book explores the difference between what appears to be and the reality beneath (not something that a camera can do). The first paragraph describes Berlin: "From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops, where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scroll-work and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class." (A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930) This is a town of faded grandeur. It is a city that had become a byword for decadent night-life, both straight and gay (the author is homosexual) and all the possibilities of the rainbow. But this was a background of serious economic weakness following Germany's defeat in the First World War and the subsequent political turmoil. This first paragraph seems to encapsulate the idea of faded grandeur, and the idea that the city was rotten behind its impressive frontage.
The characterisations are brilliant. The dialogue, often at cross-purposes, adds tension and complexity and depth to the characters. And the descriptions are stupendous. This is a writer at the top of his form.
This theme of superficiality versus reality is found throughout the book. For example, in the first section we are introduced to Christopher's landlady Fraulein Schroder, who pretends that her lodgers are guests and that she was, and is, better than she appears. She insists that she has “got the money to be independent” but she spends her days cleaning and gossiping and empties chamber pots. She talks about past lodgers including “a Freiherr [Baron] once, and a Rittmeister [a captain in the cavalry] and a Professor”, and the son of a surgeon. Now she has “Herr Issyvoo”, a barman, a lady who yodels in music-halls, and a prostitute. Her best friend Fraulein Mayr is another such who talks about the days when she was “a slip of a girl”; now “the muscles of Frl Mayer’s nude fleshy arms ripple unappetizingly.” Outside the lodgings, Christopher gives private tuition in the district in which they rich live; this provides another contrast between the dream and the reality: "Most of the richest Berlin families inhabit the Grunewald. It is difficult to understand why. ... Few of them can afford large gardens, for the ground is fabulously dear: their only view is of their neighbour's backyard, each one protected by a wire fence and a savage dog. Terror of burglary and revolution has reduced these miserable people to a state of siege. They have neither privacy nor sunshine. The district is really a millionaire's slum." (A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930)
In the second section we are introduced to the marvellously over-the-top Sally Bowles, and again we see the contrast between hope and truth: her clothes Sally’s clothes “produced a kind of theatrically chaste effect, like a nun in a grand opera”; Sally paints her fingernails bright green which only draws attention to her dirty fingers. Sally is a wannabe actress and sings in night-clubs, she is promiscuous with a succession of boyfriends, all of whom she exploits but she is a hopeless gold-digger, a poor lover abandons her for richer pickings, a rich man promises to take her for a tour of Europe but departs alone, a sixteen-year-old con artist swindles her out of some savings.
The third and fourth sections focus on Otto, a poor young boy who goes 'gay for pay'. We first meet him as the 'companion' of Peter in a seaside resort; he torments Peter by repeatedly going dancing with girls and later dumps him. We rediscover Otto in his poverty-stricken working-class family when Christopher, down on his luck, lodges with them, sharing Otto's room. The family is one of contrasts: the father a communist, the elder son a Nazi who earns a few pennies where he can, Otto, who sleeps in and doesn't work, until he returns home with twenty mark notes, having done something his mother knows is shameful. In some ways Otto is a male version of Sally.
In the fifth section we meet the Landauers, a rich Jewish family who own a posh department store. The young girl, Natalia, who, when perplexed, says “Then I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” (whatever that means) is a perfect innocent in contrast with Sally. It’s never quite clear what she means by this (her English is imperfect) but this doesn’t seem to matter. The father of the family wanted to be an academic, Bernhard's ambition was to be a sculptor, but they both spend their lives working for the family firm: it doesn't really matter if you are rich or poor, your dreams are undermined by economic reality.
The final section, set in the winter of 1932 - 1933, is one of bleak despair ... and scarily appropriate to today.
It's a brilliant book. But I hate it when author's use untranslated foreign language. Is every reader supposed to know German? Or is the author just showing off? Why doesn't an editor at least add a footnote translating the words?
Much of the book explores the difference between what appears to be and the reality beneath (not something that a camera can do). The first paragraph describes Berlin: "From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops, where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scroll-work and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class." (A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930) This is a town of faded grandeur. It is a city that had become a byword for decadent night-life, both straight and gay (the author is homosexual) and all the possibilities of the rainbow. But this was a background of serious economic weakness following Germany's defeat in the First World War and the subsequent political turmoil. This first paragraph seems to encapsulate the idea of faded grandeur, and the idea that the city was rotten behind its impressive frontage.
The characterisations are brilliant. The dialogue, often at cross-purposes, adds tension and complexity and depth to the characters. And the descriptions are stupendous. This is a writer at the top of his form.
This theme of superficiality versus reality is found throughout the book. For example, in the first section we are introduced to Christopher's landlady Fraulein Schroder, who pretends that her lodgers are guests and that she was, and is, better than she appears. She insists that she has “got the money to be independent” but she spends her days cleaning and gossiping and empties chamber pots. She talks about past lodgers including “a Freiherr [Baron] once, and a Rittmeister [a captain in the cavalry] and a Professor”, and the son of a surgeon. Now she has “Herr Issyvoo”, a barman, a lady who yodels in music-halls, and a prostitute. Her best friend Fraulein Mayr is another such who talks about the days when she was “a slip of a girl”; now “the muscles of Frl Mayer’s nude fleshy arms ripple unappetizingly.” Outside the lodgings, Christopher gives private tuition in the district in which they rich live; this provides another contrast between the dream and the reality: "Most of the richest Berlin families inhabit the Grunewald. It is difficult to understand why. ... Few of them can afford large gardens, for the ground is fabulously dear: their only view is of their neighbour's backyard, each one protected by a wire fence and a savage dog. Terror of burglary and revolution has reduced these miserable people to a state of siege. They have neither privacy nor sunshine. The district is really a millionaire's slum." (A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930)
In the second section we are introduced to the marvellously over-the-top Sally Bowles, and again we see the contrast between hope and truth: her clothes Sally’s clothes “produced a kind of theatrically chaste effect, like a nun in a grand opera”; Sally paints her fingernails bright green which only draws attention to her dirty fingers. Sally is a wannabe actress and sings in night-clubs, she is promiscuous with a succession of boyfriends, all of whom she exploits but she is a hopeless gold-digger, a poor lover abandons her for richer pickings, a rich man promises to take her for a tour of Europe but departs alone, a sixteen-year-old con artist swindles her out of some savings.
The third and fourth sections focus on Otto, a poor young boy who goes 'gay for pay'. We first meet him as the 'companion' of Peter in a seaside resort; he torments Peter by repeatedly going dancing with girls and later dumps him. We rediscover Otto in his poverty-stricken working-class family when Christopher, down on his luck, lodges with them, sharing Otto's room. The family is one of contrasts: the father a communist, the elder son a Nazi who earns a few pennies where he can, Otto, who sleeps in and doesn't work, until he returns home with twenty mark notes, having done something his mother knows is shameful. In some ways Otto is a male version of Sally.
In the fifth section we meet the Landauers, a rich Jewish family who own a posh department store. The young girl, Natalia, who, when perplexed, says “Then I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” (whatever that means) is a perfect innocent in contrast with Sally. It’s never quite clear what she means by this (her English is imperfect) but this doesn’t seem to matter. The father of the family wanted to be an academic, Bernhard's ambition was to be a sculptor, but they both spend their lives working for the family firm: it doesn't really matter if you are rich or poor, your dreams are undermined by economic reality.
The final section, set in the winter of 1932 - 1933, is one of bleak despair ... and scarily appropriate to today.
It's a brilliant book. But I hate it when author's use untranslated foreign language. Is every reader supposed to know German? Or is the author just showing off? Why doesn't an editor at least add a footnote translating the words?
lisa_mirabai's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
rottenjester's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
sallypam's review against another edition
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.5
lil_juulnieb's review against another edition
Goodbye to this novel 👋 I have other things to do besides reading the diary of the most boring man on planet Earth who just happened to live in Nazi Germany.
buecherurstey's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
3.75