The Dark Room [Paperback]

This is a collection of three fictional stories of young people's experiences of the War and its aftermath. The first two portray children who seem far too young and innocent to be responsible for war-time events, and yet who were/are forced to fight for their lives, for survival, whilst also trying to comprend the role of their parents, and those they love, in all the atrocities.

In the second tale, Lore progressively realises that love and innocence do not go hand in hand. She is ultimately obliged to link the imprisonment of her own parents to the guilt of the Nazis. Trust, love and understanding take on a whole new dimension for her, and for us as readers.

Micha, the protagonist of the final story, did not live through World War II. The luxury of a generation gap enables him to actively pursue his obsessive interest in his grand-father's past without pain, until he, like Lore, has to face the music. He has to understand that the grandpa he loved was not perfect. He could easily hate a stranger, but with those dear to us, that hatred and disgust is mixed so strongly with love that we are forced to reassess our emotions and our judgements of others.

This book is one more tribute to the open-mindedness of the German nation. From the outside, at least, the Germans seem to have tried their utmost to take responsibility for the evils they committed in World War II. They aimed to face mistakes and to learn from them. We have not all been so brave and so painfully honest, and the writing of Rachel Seiffert reflects what Germany has learnt in the most positive, yet deceptively simple, way we could hope for.

The character of Micha in particular I found most absorbing. His insistence on finding out about the possible guilt of his Grandfather, at the expense of the feelings of his family and impact on his pregnant partner, was a combination of frustrating and commendable. The view that the entire nation was guilty, and in many ways we are still guilty, rang true.

A marvellous read.

This book is a page turner. I read it in a sitting, notwithstanding some of the harrowing material contained within its pages, and found it a first class read. As a debut novel, it is exceptional stuff. If she continues to hone her craft, we can expect great things from Ms Seiffert.

Firstly, is it a novel? Yes - I think it is - just. However, in presenting the stories as three discrete events Ms Seiffert fails to do full justice to her theme, and as a result it never quite becomes a continuous whole. Had she chosen to tell the stories side by side, rather than in succession, though it would undoubtedly have been a more difficult read, the theme would, I think, have been considerably clearer.

Secondly, does it trivialise horrendous events? No it doesn't, for surely one of the most horrendous aspects of the genocide is the fact that it was perpetrated by very ordinary people. People who had families and friends whom they loved, for whom they cared. People who for all their goodness, for all their 'ordinariness' were capable of committing and/or bearing silent witness to unspeakable crimes. People like us.

Thirdly, is it about marginalisation, luck and accidents of birth? Well, yes - but I think that is to simplify it. Certainly Helmut is marginalised because of his disability; certainly there is a good deal of luck for Lorne and her surviving siblings in their tortuous journey across vanquished Germany; and certainly are we not all merely accidents of birth? Might it not equally be argued that this is a novel about timing? If Helmut had been born fifty years later his disability might have been resolved; if Micha had been born 50 years earlier he too might have been proud to wear the uniform of the Waffen SS; and Mina, what of Mina, she of Turkish parents, what if Mina had been born 50 years earlier? For as her father observes 'I am Turkish: that doesn't change. Germany is racist: that doesn't change. .... Micha, my son, this is a good and a bad country we live in.' (p.235)

And there it is - the heart of this novel, for The Dark Room is about dislocations. It's about how great goodness and great evil can find expression from within the same vessel, and how we struggle to rationalise that dislocation. Thus Helmut's mutti and papi wrestle (unsuccessfully as it turns out) with the love they feel for their son, whilst loathing his increasingly obvious disability. Thus Lore plays out her doubts and fears about the parents from whom she has known only love, in her relationship with Thomas. Itinerant Thomas, without whom she and her siblings would almost certainly have died. Thomas, whom she slowly comes to trust and care for, but who she understands in some half-formed way might not, in another time, another place, be the Saviour he appears to be. And Micha, who most clearly presents us with the internal struggle to rationalise his personal experience of the goodness of his beloved Opa, and his knowledge that this same man was capable of unspeakable evil.

Here in the (arguably) civilised western democracy known as the United Kingdom we have not been presented with these dilemmas for hundreds of years, at least not in such a stark, immediate and personal way..but in another time, another place, in a democratically elected State was the deliberate and planned genocide of Jews, gipsies and other 'deviants'. Few of us are given the vision and even less of us the courage to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, indeed it is only our concept of good which enables us to identify evil, our concept of right which enables us to identify wrong. Ms Seiffert invites us to examine these great and sobering truths. To ask ourselves - 'What would I have done?' 'How would I feel?'. In Yad Veshem in Israel there is Garden of Remembrance for the Righteous Gentiles. It's not very full.