I liked this novel! It is very unusual and mesmerizing, and I could not put it down! I had read about it in a review just before Christmas, and so when it came in the store, I was thrilled. As a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, it was released in the United States only in paperback, which is a shame, for it would have been a collector’s item in hardback (see the original British hardcover below right). A resident of Italy, Simon Mawer teaches at St. George’s British International School in Rome.
Opening in the 1920s in Czechoslovakia, this novel follows the lives of a young married couple, Viktor and Liesel Landauer, as they first hire the acclaimed modern architect Rainer von Abt to build them a house which will be an award winning showplace, a place for music gatherings with the best European composers performing, as well as a home for their two children. Seeing as money is no object Viktor, who is a Jew, and who creates the sought after Landauer automobile, informs the architect to spare no expense. Hence, as a special part of the house, a totally glass room is created which makes the house the most talked about structure in the area.
Flash forward and the reader sees the house move from Czech to Nazi to Soviet states and then back to the Czech state. As the family flees Nazi rule along with the nanny–who is “more than a nanny”–and her child, the reader experiences the ravages of a Nazi infused chaos. Therefore, the reader is taken on a wild daring ride from the beginnings of WWII until its demise. So, actually the house itself becomes like a character as the reader learns of its occupants and its purposes as the years pass.
In the “Author’s Note,” given as a preface to this remarkable book, Mawer states, “Although The Glass Room is a work of fiction, the house and its setting are not fictional. I have disguised both with name changes but that will not fool anyone who knows the building on which the Landauer House is modeled or the city that hides behind the name Mesto. However, penetrating those thin disguises will not lead to any further revelations…..A few non-fictional characters do make brief appearances. One such is the talented composer Vitezslava Kapralova, whose tragically short life seems emblematic of the brilliant but doomed First Republic of Czechoslovakia.”
A totally separate story emerges within the lives of the Landauer family and their friends. As a cosmopolitan European art form in itself, this novel requires dedication to all of the underlying currents, both political, aesthetic, social, and personal. I am richer for having read it.
See Lisa’s blog on other books shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize and an additional review of The Glass Room.
-Nan
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