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.

Just to emphasise, in the second story, I think the point is that the war is conveyed through the children's eyes; this may therefore be construed as a naive view, but this is deliberate. They don't understand what is really happening, or why their father is in prison, or their mother has deserted them, but they know things are bad and they really do suffer. Seiffert's skill is to show their suffering on a small scale. This is how the war affected one family, in particular one girl, it happens over a short period of time - it's not meant to be a potted history of the Second World War.

In the third story Michael is struggling to come to terms with his grandfather's role as an SS officer in Belaruse. There are graphic descriptions of people being shot and killed, and this is enough to evoke the sense of violence, horror and war, but again on a different level.

I think that Seiffert's understanding of the effect of war on the lives of ordinary people is very profound, touching and emotional. This is powerful stuff. She uses some very moving imagery, and although she might not discuss things in a broader sense, and the tone is quite desensitised, this is not the point of the novel, and what she does achieve is a moving portrait of 'smaller' lives and events which are touched by the horror of war.

I highly recommend this book and commend Rachel Seiffert on her achievement.