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A review by trish204
The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook
4.0
At first I really did not think I could write a review. The topic of this book just hit too close to home. And even now, after the silver lining at the end, there is a certain heaviness on my chest.
This book is about a British Colonel, his wife and son who go to live in Hamburg, Germany, because the Colonel is in charge of rebuilding the city after WWII.
Colonel Lewis Morgan is a kind man. Not really good at expressing his emotions (which nearly drove me up the walls) but he believes in humanity and forgiveness. That, of course, does not sit well with other officers, his superiors and even his wife.
Rachel has not been herself ever since the night her son Michael was killed in front of her in a night bombing.
Edmund, the youngest son, is alive but definitely neglected by both parents, and tries to navigate an alien world.
In addition to that, Colonal Morgan has offered the German family in whose house the Morgans are scheduled to live to stay with them (the house is a villa so there is more than enough room). Again, noble, but not very well thought through.
The owner of the house, Herr Luber, has lost his wife in the war and needs to raise his daughter, Frieda, alone - no easy task since the girl definitely is disturbed if you ask me (and not just because of the loss of her mother either, judging by some revelations later on in the book).
So we have this host of characters plus some others from the British military. A very potent mix.
What was so difficult for me were the (accurate) descriptions of Hamburg after the war. The people there; the cold; the starvation; the hopelessness; all the silly prejudice against Germans (I nearly broke down on the train when Edmund, at the beginning of the book, reads the pamphlet they got as instructions for living in Germany); the hate (on both sides); the fear.
The narrator is doing a pretty good job even with the German words and phrases so this was a very nice audiobook and the author had a very intricate and wonderful way of first creating and then interweaving all the different POVs. I just think that I might have enjoyed the often beautiful writing style more had my mind not wandered off to what I remembered from history lessons and my grandparents' accounts.
This book is about a British Colonel, his wife and son who go to live in Hamburg, Germany, because the Colonel is in charge of rebuilding the city after WWII.
Colonel Lewis Morgan is a kind man. Not really good at expressing his emotions (which nearly drove me up the walls) but he believes in humanity and forgiveness. That, of course, does not sit well with other officers, his superiors and even his wife.
Rachel has not been herself ever since the night her son Michael was killed in front of her in a night bombing.
Edmund, the youngest son, is alive but definitely neglected by both parents, and tries to navigate an alien world.
In addition to that, Colonal Morgan has offered the German family in whose house the Morgans are scheduled to live to stay with them (the house is a villa so there is more than enough room). Again, noble, but not very well thought through.
The owner of the house, Herr Luber, has lost his wife in the war and needs to raise his daughter, Frieda, alone - no easy task since the girl definitely is disturbed if you ask me (and not just because of the loss of her mother either, judging by some revelations later on in the book).
So we have this host of characters plus some others from the British military. A very potent mix.
What was so difficult for me were the (accurate) descriptions of Hamburg after the war. The people there; the cold; the starvation; the hopelessness; all the silly prejudice against Germans (I nearly broke down on the train when Edmund, at the beginning of the book, reads the pamphlet they got as instructions for living in Germany); the hate (on both sides); the fear.
The narrator is doing a pretty good job even with the German words and phrases so this was a very nice audiobook and the author had a very intricate and wonderful way of first creating and then interweaving all the different POVs. I just think that I might have enjoyed the often beautiful writing style more had my mind not wandered off to what I remembered from history lessons and my grandparents' accounts.