The Dark Room - Softcover

Seiffert, Rachel

3.72

2,934 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676974074 ISBN 13: 9780676974072

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2002

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A debut novel that retells the history of twentieth-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans.

Helmut: A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer’s assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera. . . . Lore: In the weeks following Germany’s surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother. . . . Micha: Many years after the war, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him is compromised by his own past.

The Dark Room evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological authenticity. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has re-envisioned and illuminated signal moments of the twentieth century in all their drama and complexity.

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Review:

The Dark Room is a careful study of three Germans affected by the Second World War: Helmut the young photographer with the deformed arm; Lore the 12-year-old who manages to get her refugee siblings to Hamburg in 1945; and Micha the young teacher who pursues the truth about his grandfather's war years 50 years later. Micha is the most instructive in getting to the core of this book:

I think they should read about the people who did it, too. The real, everyday people, you know. Not just Hitler and Eichmann and whoever. All the underlings, I mean. The students should learn about their lives, the ones who really did the killing.

Seiffert writes about the "real, everyday people", about the ones who didn't actually "do it". She writes chronologically, from Helmut's birth in 1921 to Micha living in Germany in 1997, and widens the time-frame with each story.

Helmut is unable to join up because of his weak arm--his parents become ashamed of him in Nazi Germany. Yet by taking part in the last-ditch stand against the Russian invasion of Berlin in 1945 he is at last happy. His story, represented through his tiny photographer's lens, is indicative of his own narrow vision. Seiffert widens her view with Lore, and her encounter with Thomas, a young man who has blue-smudged numbers up his arm and (false) documents saying he is Jewish. As a well-off 12-year-old, whose father was in the Nazi Party, Lore too is at first oblivious to the effects of the war on others. She tries to believe that the pictures the Allies pin up of the Jews in the camps--whether alive or dead--are American actors. Micha's story, raking over the past and with the advantage of hindsight, well-documented history and the public German admission of guilt, feels the most raw and truthful. Seiffert writes delicately and plainly, making clear that it is not just the Jewish or Nazi experience of the Second World War which is valid, but that a whole country was involved, and is still affected by it. The Dark Room reminds us again that every person's experience is unique, and every person's heritage (whether German, Byelorussian, American or Jewish, Christian or atheist) will always be unique to them. --Olivia Dickinson

Review:

"'An important book, a powerful commentary on the moral issues of the last century with the realisation that no one is completely blameless...Extraordinary' Sunday Express"

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