The Blind Side of the Heart [Paperback]

I thought it would be interesting to read a novel about the impact of the two World Wars on the lives of German women. I assume that the "blind side of the heart" refers to people's inability to express normal love and emotion when they have been traumatised by the effects of war, both in grinding their lives down to a question of mere survival, and in taking away or maiming those they love. In this case, the main character Helene is reduced to a kind of automaton, caring for the sick in her role as a nurse, but unable to relate properly to her son. A complication is that the main factors destroying Helene have little to do with war as such - the loss of a lover and the callous and brutal behaviour of her husband, not to mention her own mother's irrational cruelty.

The focus on the minute details of daily life and on passing thoughts is often well-observed e.g. the description of Helene as a young girl studying every mole and blemish on her sister's back. However, I was disappointed by the lack of focus on the "bigger picture" to show how Germany evolved from a period of humiliation and punitive reparations after World War 1, through hyperinflation and political instability to World War 2 under Hitler.

I was repelled by the graphic descriptions of bodily functions, maladies and wounds. Helene's and at the end her son Peter's observation of the world with such a stark lack of emotion - for the "good characters" to be so hard - is shocking. I am unsure too what extent this excessive objectivity is deliberate but it reduced my capacity to empathise with the characters. I also found some of them quite unconvincing such as Helene's eccentric, often cruel mother, and her oddly passive father, and the strange relationship between these two. Helene's husband Wilhelm was painted too crudely in negative terms.

The book may have suffered seriously in translation. I had to reread several sentences which persisted in not making sense or appearing to be "non sequiturs". Generally, there is a stilted note to the phrasing which interferes with my involvement in the tale. Some of the earnest conversations on literature and philosophy are too stiff and unnatural. With a sense of frustration, I wanted to rewrite large sections of potentially moving or interesting scenes.

The pace is a little too slow, with a lack of "narrative drive" and episodes or encounters which "drift away to nothing" - rather like real life, I suppose e.g. the scenes with the beautiful Martha's admirers and her own eventual "disappearance" from the story.

The story would have made a greater impact with pruning away of some lengthy passages which added little. The lesbianism, with hints of incest, seemed to me pointless distractions from the main story - except perhaps the love between Martha and Leontine serves to show a freedom of expression allowed in "fashionable circles" in the 20s but suppressed as decadent by the Nazis.

This story is too harrowing to be enjoyable, and it is certainly not a page turner, although I think memories of certain scenes will remain with me such as Helene's mushroom-hunting expedition in the forest, made horrific by her encounter with the cattle trucks carrying Jewish prisoners, which she cannot fully comprehend at the time, although the reader can, with the benefit of hindsight. The scene also foreshadows her appalling yet understandable abandonment of the son whom she loves, yet also finds a burden.

The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck was drawn to my attention a writer who had made a contribution to an end of year reflection of the best novels of the foregoing year. It came highly recommended and indeed it's a novel that portrays its own high praise as the winner of the German book prize, equivalent of the Man Booker prize, short listed for the Independent foreign fiction prize and last but not least an international best seller. It is a novel that has also achieved high critical acclaim. However, whilst the novel tells a powerful story, I could not fully succumb to all its achievements and critical acclaim.

Julia Frank's novel is a harrowing story that delineates the life and times of Helene Wursich, the second daughter to a family of four. Set mainly in the German town of Bautzen and Berlin, it begins with a prologue that sets out the direction and tone of the novel. In the prologue eight year old Peter witnesses his mother being raped by soldiers. Subsequently, in an act that could only be judged harsh by any standard, almost as if unburdening herself of a heavy weight, Peter's mother, Helene, abandon him at a train station. Following the prologue, the story that begins leaps back in time to when Helene was a child growing up in Bautzen with her family. Tragedy befalls the Wursich family. The father is called to fight in the First World War, the Jewish mother falls into depression as a result and when her husband returns from the war seriously injured she withdraws from the family. The mother's problems are compounded by the fact that she has lost four sons in child birth. The two daughters Martha and Helene are left to run the household, weary of this responsibility and after the death of their father they move to Berlin to live with an aunt called Fanny. There a new world opens up to the two sisters. The novel then focuses its attention on Helene and the world in which the story is narrated is broadly seen through the experiences of Helene - in other words the novel becomes Helene's story.

Franck's novel is ambitious and far reaching as she delves into the lives of the Wursich family. It is a well observed story that although seen mainly from the perspective of Helene there are nonetheless shifts in perspective where in the early stage of the novel things are seen through the eyes of the two sisters, Martha and Helene, and towards the very end through the eyes of Peter. To some extent this shift in perspective kept the narrative alive.

Through three generations of the Wursich family, Franck undertakes a subtle examination of German society across the first and second world wars. The Wursich family is symbolic of the outsider in a society that was to become more and more inward looking with its notion of a pure Aryan race. The family effectively live in fear as Helene's mother has to conceal her Jewishness right through to Helene's husband forging a new identity for her and changes her name to Alice. There is grave suffering and pathos as Franck outlines the experience of the Wursich's at the hands of the majority. Helene's sister Martha is eventually taken off to work in a labour camp, her mother dies in an institution, her aunt Fanny is displaced and her property seized and Helene suffers terribly at the hands of her husband, Wilhelm.

Having stated the above, I must say that one of problems I had with the novel was that it is overlong. It is a cliché to say of many novels that they could have done with better editing but cliché or not that for me was clearly the case with this novel. In the middle sections of the novel there are some dull mundane descriptive passages. The purpose of this may well be to hammer home the point about lives being imposed upon by the time and social conditions. This is understandable but it was over done. And there were times when I said to myself I have got the message, now move the narrative on. All this is not helped by the fact that the story is told at a very slow pace.

Another problem that I had with the novel was that the story is told through the third person omniscient narrator. Given the subject and issues addressed in the novel that for me was a weakness. It's a story of some painful hard hitting human suffering but for me because of the third person, impersonal, narration it lacked a clear voice in which to convey it powerful themes. In large passages of the novel I was not fully engaged and was unable to empathise with the characters at times. In other words, the narration was too clinical. Nonetheless, a word of praise must be paid to the translator, Anthea Bell, as she appears to have captured the tone and sparseness of the original German text. There is very little use of adjectives or metaphors.

Putting aside my criticism, The Blind Side of the Heart is a multifaceted novel. On one level it is an exploration of love - love between sisters, between husband and wife, and parent and child. Franck brilliantly shows the complex nature of love. It can be based on a foundation of unrequited feelings, it is cruel, it is tender and it could be shown by simple kindness. This exploration of love is brilliantly depicted in the chapter that deals with the father's Ernst Wursich, drafting into the First World War when he leaves his wife at home threatening to kill herself. Franck's artistic achievement here is that she reminds us of the difficult choices one sometimes have to make in the name of love - for example love of one's spouse or of one's country.

Yet on another level The Blind Side of the Heart is a dark novel. There are some harsh brutalities outlined - for example, in the relationship between Helen and her husband Wilhelm. The dark passages depict a powerful story of Helene's descent into isolation and tragic loss. But there is also hope as we observe a family's endurance even in debts of despair. The death bed reconciliation between Ernst and his wife Selma is a telling manifestation of human endurance.

That the novel is ambitious can be seen by the fact that it is also a novel of ideas. In one passage Franck tries to tease out what some of the great moral philosophers had to say about the human quest for pleasure and happiness. Franck also raises the question of human faith and belief in a God that does not manifest himself especially in time of need and it is out of this discussion that the significance of the title arises. In a church Helene over hears a mother answers her child, who literally asks where is God, by telling the child: "No one can see him, said the mother, you can't see him with your eyes. You have to see him with your heart, child." Well just as one needs a leap of faith to see God with the heart, I guess Franck is saying so too the heart can close its eyes to suffering and do harsh things in order to survive.

The Blind Side of the Heart is a novel that quietly states its powerful themes. Although moving at times overall the novel does not pull at the emotions. It is a novel that commands a thoughtful read but at the end it is worth the effort required to read it. Despite my reservation perhaps it deserves its success.

This is an unforgettable novel. Profound, deeply moving and quite harrowing in places, it is also a story that will remain with you. I totally recommend it.