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A young Englishman goes to Cold War Leipzig for a weekend with a group of student actors and, during his brief visit beyond the Iron Curtain, falls for an East German girl who is just beginning to be aware of the horrendous way her country is governed. Her misery touches him, her love excites him, but he is too frightened to help. He spends 19 years suppressing the strength of his feelings for the girl he knew only by her nickname "Snowleg" - until one day, with Germany by now united, he decides to go back and look for her. But who is she now, how will his having once abandoned her have affected her life, and how will he find her?
Snowleg is the story of more than one sundered love, of both broken dreams and damaged families. The central figure of the novel, which grows up as an Englishman, chooses to live in Berlin. He is a senior doctor; but his life is a startling mixture of romantic, of erratic, of dissolute behaviour. For long years he nurses the secret of Snowleg and his longing for a love he had the chance to grasp but failed to take.
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Peter's search for Snowleg, and secondarily, for his father, is told through flashbacks and memories, and the nature of their relationship unfolds in detail. The role of the secret police in their separation and the conflicts between the original ideal of communism and its later implementation are shown through Uwe and Hesse, two secret policemen, who appear in the prologue and in the conclusion and provide fresh perspective on the action, elevating this novel above the typical love story.
The vibrancy of Shakespeare's prose makes every page of this novel a delight to read. Filled with irony and, often, humor, the dialogue comes alive. Unforgettable descriptions, especially of the darkness, cold, and soot in Leipzig, reveal feelings as well as convey information. To Peter, listening to the radio, a love song "had red eyes and ran furtively across his mind...It was a rat dressed up as a promise." Repeating motifs--a van with a fish painted on it, a dying deer, the story of Sir Bedevere, a fur coat, and the bones of a muskrat--echo throughout the novel and connect scenes symbolically. Like most romances, the story relies on coincidence and fortuitous accident, but Shakespeare's writing is so strong and the story is so exciting that even the most jaded reader will willingly accept the implausibilities. Mary Whipple
In common with other reviewers I found Shakespeare very convincing at evoking atmosphere and a sense of time and place. Less convincing, however, is the manner in which every loose end is tied up all too neatly at the end.
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