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A review by andershanson
The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook
3.0
There aren't a lot of novels set in the years immediately following the Second world War. The war itself has been thoroughly covered, but the period after it when a shattered Germany embarks on its reconstruction is rarely mentioned. That is what first attracted me to this book, and it's that period and the difficulties coming to terms with what happened and the personal complications that causes is the premise of this book.
The Aftermath tells the story of Colonel Lewis Morgan who heads up the British administration in an area near Hamburg. As with other senior officers he requisitions a grand house nearby for himself and his wife Rachael and son Edmund who travel over from Britain to join him. However, in a story that is based on real life events from Rhidian Brook's own family, rather than throw out the German architect Stefan Lubert and his daughter Freda, he instead insists that they stay on in the house with his family. Although this creates surprise and slight suspicion from colleagues, it is Morgan's wife Rachael who finds this hardest to adapt to with memories of losing their eldest son Michael through a stray German bomb whilst living in supposedly safe rural Wales, still fresh in her mind.
What this book is first and foremost is a story about relationships and shared experiences, and people's different attitudes to dealing with complicated world they now live in. Lewis Morgan has been on the frontline during the war, but wants to help get to know the Germans and help improve their lives post-war. Rachael Morgan has lost a son, about which she feels very bitter and makes understanding the similar pain felt by many Germans very difficult to empathise with, even though Lubert is struggling, but in a quieter way, to comes to terms with a loss of his own. This book eventually centres on the way these two start to bond over this shared experience despite supposedly being 'enemies'. This theme of a shared experience is also emphasised by metaphors such as the Elbe flowing out to the North Sea which links Germany to Britain, and two characters watching a fire that is described as a 'theatre with its own plots and sub-plots'. There is a distinct melancholy throughout much the book, but it is one interspersed with good times and a hope to return to the past when Germany was a great cultured and prosperous country.
Although this book is set 70 years ago, the theme of trying to rebuild countries devastated by war and dictatorship is also a very modern one, having a resonance with what is currently happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the ever present difficulties throughout this book is how much to trust the 'enemy' with parallels with the fear of what has become known in Afghanistan as 'green on blue attacks' where supposed allies turn out to be very much not so. In many respects the language used is also very similar, "we had a convoy attack by two insurgents last week."
Although I enjoyed this book a lot I do have a few quibbles. One was the feeling every so often that the author had certain passages or lines that he'd pictured in his mind and just levered in to this story even though they didn't necessarily fit with the rest of it. Some of the description of Lubert's dreaming of his late wife seemed oddly graphic compared to the rest of the book. Another was Morgan's sudden poetic thoughts about his interpreter "he wanted to know about those boots - their provenance, the roads they'd travelled, the experiences had in them." when there hadn't been any other such elaborate language up to that point in the book. My biggest source of dissatisfaction though was the ending which I felt petered out rather than coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Once the rapprochement between two of the leading characters had started to take place I thought I knew how the book would end, and I was pleased that my guess was wrong, I did end up being left with a feeling that it hadn't ended properly.
Despite the ending however, this was an enjoyable book and one I would definitely recommend to others. The book has already been bought to be turned in to a film by Ridley Scott, and I expect it will make a very good film, possibly a better film than a book, but I'd guess that it is therefore going to be big. So read it now, before the film is released.
The Aftermath tells the story of Colonel Lewis Morgan who heads up the British administration in an area near Hamburg. As with other senior officers he requisitions a grand house nearby for himself and his wife Rachael and son Edmund who travel over from Britain to join him. However, in a story that is based on real life events from Rhidian Brook's own family, rather than throw out the German architect Stefan Lubert and his daughter Freda, he instead insists that they stay on in the house with his family. Although this creates surprise and slight suspicion from colleagues, it is Morgan's wife Rachael who finds this hardest to adapt to with memories of losing their eldest son Michael through a stray German bomb whilst living in supposedly safe rural Wales, still fresh in her mind.
What this book is first and foremost is a story about relationships and shared experiences, and people's different attitudes to dealing with complicated world they now live in. Lewis Morgan has been on the frontline during the war, but wants to help get to know the Germans and help improve their lives post-war. Rachael Morgan has lost a son, about which she feels very bitter and makes understanding the similar pain felt by many Germans very difficult to empathise with, even though Lubert is struggling, but in a quieter way, to comes to terms with a loss of his own. This book eventually centres on the way these two start to bond over this shared experience despite supposedly being 'enemies'. This theme of a shared experience is also emphasised by metaphors such as the Elbe flowing out to the North Sea which links Germany to Britain, and two characters watching a fire that is described as a 'theatre with its own plots and sub-plots'. There is a distinct melancholy throughout much the book, but it is one interspersed with good times and a hope to return to the past when Germany was a great cultured and prosperous country.
Although this book is set 70 years ago, the theme of trying to rebuild countries devastated by war and dictatorship is also a very modern one, having a resonance with what is currently happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the ever present difficulties throughout this book is how much to trust the 'enemy' with parallels with the fear of what has become known in Afghanistan as 'green on blue attacks' where supposed allies turn out to be very much not so. In many respects the language used is also very similar, "we had a convoy attack by two insurgents last week."
Although I enjoyed this book a lot I do have a few quibbles. One was the feeling every so often that the author had certain passages or lines that he'd pictured in his mind and just levered in to this story even though they didn't necessarily fit with the rest of it. Some of the description of Lubert's dreaming of his late wife seemed oddly graphic compared to the rest of the book. Another was Morgan's sudden poetic thoughts about his interpreter "he wanted to know about those boots - their provenance, the roads they'd travelled, the experiences had in them." when there hadn't been any other such elaborate language up to that point in the book. My biggest source of dissatisfaction though was the ending which I felt petered out rather than coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Once the rapprochement between two of the leading characters had started to take place I thought I knew how the book would end, and I was pleased that my guess was wrong, I did end up being left with a feeling that it hadn't ended properly.
Despite the ending however, this was an enjoyable book and one I would definitely recommend to others. The book has already been bought to be turned in to a film by Ridley Scott, and I expect it will make a very good film, possibly a better film than a book, but I'd guess that it is therefore going to be big. So read it now, before the film is released.