The Nazis are coming! The Nazis are coming!

The Pieces from Berlin
Michael Pye

Berlin has all the makings of a marvelous book. Set in the early aughts, Sarah, an elderly Holocaust survivor, passes a shop window in Zurich, and spies a table that she remembers from her former life. When it became clear that she and her husband were doomed, Sarah gave the table to Lucia Muller-Rossi for safekeeping. Lucia subsequently vanished, but here she is--and here Sarah's antique table is--to make the past come vividly alive again. Sarah understandably wants retribution, and turns to Lucia's son and granddaughter for help in her quest. Nicholas vaguely remembers his mother's shady dealings during the war, and Helen is appalled, and quickly vows to do whatever she can to ensure that this ill-gotten property is restored to its rightful owner. The characters, each in their turn, struggle with memories, and what it means to be connected to such a terrible situation. Is Lucia a monster, a thief--or is she just opportunisitic? Is she just looking out for her son? Is Nicholas complicit in his mother's crimes, or is he off the hook because he was just a little boy? Does Helen owe Sarah a duty to restore her property, or does she owe her grandmother, Lucia, a duty of loyalty? Pye puts all these elements in a pot and mixes them up--and then he sets the pot on the stove and forgets to turn up the heat.

Because: nothing really happens in this book. Oh, a lot happens. We're whisked back to the fall of Berlin, at the end of the Second World War, and here Pye hits his stride, as the child Nicholas waits for his mother to get home from a "business" meeting, watching the sky outside his bedroom window explode with bombs. If the bulk of the novel was set in 1945 it would be far more successful than it actually is. We're taken even further back, to observe Lucia's childhood and early adulthood, and we begin to understand how she must have felt, an Italian-born woman married to a Swiss man, living in Berlin: unmoored, precariously-situated, a woman without a country in a time and place when country mattered most.

But just as much of the book is set in the modern day as it is in 1945. And...nothing really happens. Or at least, nothing satisfying or forward-moving happens, at all. Characters appear and tell their stories. It's like a Greek Tragedy, where a woman steps up from the chorus and says, "My name is Paris Helen, hear my tale of woe." There's a lot of meetings in cafes, and restaurants, and hotels where one character spills his or her guts to another character. Pye is a talented writer, and his prose shines, and he gives us several great images to mull over, most notably that of a frozen body falling from a tree and cracking like glass. I can't stop thinking about that. But in the end nobody is closer to absolution, or satisfaction, than they were at the beginning of this story. It's as if the Israelites followed Moses through the desert for forty years, and then said, "You know, let's just go home," and did.

Lucia's actions are based on a real-life account, but that's just what this book feels like: a regurgitation of facts. I would have liked to know more about one character, than a little about all of them. I'd like to know more about how Lucia felt when she was telling these poor Jews that she would care for their things. Later we hear her say that she was scared, and trying to do what she could for her son, but by that time in the story she is so unreliable that we don't know to believe her or not. The firebombing of Berlin is a powerful moment, but I would sacrifice the child Nicholas's reaction to it for a picture of Lucia, standing in her warehouse of Jewish valuables, running her fingers over them, thinking about the people they belong to. The character of Helen can be cut out entirely. Nicholas can do for the story what she's doing, on his own. And the character of Peter Clarke is insultingly irrelevant. It's like if someone made you oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies, and put in one chocolate chip, and four thousand raisins. THE CHOCOLATE IS THE BEST PART! Nobody cares about the raisins! They're extraneous!

The proportions are all off, is what I'm trying to say. Less of some things. More of others. That's what this book needs, and now I need cookies.

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.