Book Review: "The Good German"

A few years back, I went to the Scholastic warehouse sale with a teacher friend.  It is a well-known fact that teachers cannot resist books - multiply that times about ten and you have me, an English teacher, who cannot stay away from books, much less resist them.  Anyway, we went to this sale looking for bargains.  We ended up stuffing a box as full as we could get it and buying the whole thing for $25.  It was a good deal.  One of the books I stuffed in that box was "The Good German" by Joseph Kanon.

For the last two and a half years, this book has lay on my pile of books to be read.  Somehow, this pile seems to grow over time, rather than diminish.  I think the pile has at least a dozen books on it right now.  Every break and every summer I tell myself that I will finally get to the bottom of the pile.  Every so often during the school year, when I feel like I am losing my sanity from working sixty hour weeks, I tell myself I'm going to start frequenting a coffee shop and reading once a week again.  Then, I will get to the bottom of the pile of books.

The pile still remains, but I am on summer break and on a renewed resolve to read, both for personal enjoyment and professional development.  Almost two weeks ago, I was packing for a weekend trip, and I decided to take some reading material.  I perused the pile and pulled out "The Good German."  I stuffed it in my bag, along with a book for professional development, and figured neither one would be touched, as I expected to be busy the whole trip.  

I got to the hotel room and had some unexpected time to read.  I didn't feel like thinking about school, so I pulled out the novel.  It is a historical novel, set in the aftermath of D-Day in Berlin, and told from the perspective of an American journalist.  It has all of the requirements for today's novels: mystery, murder, love.  It has the power to make you keep turning the pages.  Those are all the prerequisites for a "good" novel these days.

As I read it, my mind had subconsciously checked off these things and was wondering if this novel had anything more to offer than any other bestseller on today's bookstore shelves.  While I'm not a renowned book critic, I will tell you two reasons I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even if it remains a book that I will only read through once.

I picked up the book because it was a historical novel.  I still like it for being a historical novel.  What's more, I find it to be an unusual historical novel in the fact that it is set in a time period and place that I have never heard of another novel being set in.  I have read an abundance of novels set during the war in Germany, in the concentration camps, all over Europe, but after the war?  I have heard the history of how terrible it was for the German people, but even history books are sparse on this point.  This book treats a time period and place that I have not seen other authors treat, perhaps because it is a difficult, uncomfortable time to discuss.  The author isn't always favorable in the picture he paints of any group: the Germans, the Russians, the English, or the Americans.  He reveals flaws in all the groups, and he helps you feel a minute amount of the pain the German people were probably undergoing at that time.

I suppose the purpose of a historical novel is to help you, the reader, walk in the shoes of the people of history for a little while.  Kanon does just that.  Mostly, you are walking in the shoes of an American journalist as he uncovers a scandal, but you also get short walks in the lives of German citizens after the war - both Jewish and non-Jewish.

The other thing I liked about the book is the perspective from which it is told.  As I mentioned before, the author reveals the failings of all nationalities involved in Berlin.  Although it is told from an American's standpoint, this American journalist comes to realize that even the Americans are not faultless in their dealings.  The author doesn't paint anyone, not even the Americans, as perfect heroes.  He reveals the humanity and the corruption in everyone.  I believe this is why he created the main character and narrator as a journalist because the nature of a journalist is to investigate and to discover things that don't meet the eye.  

You could discuss many themes for this book, but the one I walked away with is "everything is not always as it seems."  The author teaches this lesson in multiple places in the book, helping the reader to see that stereotypes for any nationality, any people, in any time or place, are never always true.