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A review by andrew61
Group Portrait with Lady by Heinrich Böll
5.0
A couple of years ago I read the Lost Honour of Katharina Blum in which Boll through the experience of a German woman pulls apart the tabloid hunt for sensationalism with sharp wit and after reviewing it I received a recommendation to read this book which again uses the narrative device of a woman's life to reflect on the German experience both during world ward 2 and post war up to 1970 whilst again the author peppers his narrative with dark humour.
In this story we do not meet Leni Pfieffer directly as her tale is narrated by a nameless 'Author' who interviews anyone and everyone who has known Leni during the period , thus our understanding of this enigmatic woman is fractured and we never really have her perspective. Perhaps that in itself is reflective of the outsider's knowledge of Germany during these years, we all bring our assumptions and cod psychology to bear on a people traumatised by those events in that period and whose history is dominated by guilt of the horrors inflicted by a Germany ruled by extremists but who also suffered as individuals ( the book graphically re-enacts the experience of the Carpet bombing of Cologne in 1944).
Leni is 16 in 1938 , a beautiful blonde woman who has the world and men at her feet as she starts work in her father's business. We then meet her lost love, her short lived husband , and view her other wartime life as told by her friends , in laws, work mates, and other acquaintances as her experience of war is a mirror reflection of life itself in Germany at that time. These years culminate in her relationship with a Russian prisoner of war and a passionate love affair in a church crypt as the bombs fall which result in her pregnancy. The book also goes off on tangential threads as the author follows strings of plot , including the Russian prisoners removal to an American/French labour camp with Leni searching for him on her bike, and the author's search for the story of the nun who Leni befriends which leads the author to an amorous adventure in a Rome convent whilst an apparent miraculous blossoming of roses occurs. The book only hints at events in the front line during the war and the treatment of minorities by referencing some soldiers returning and taking on new identities but Leni is frequently expressed as unconcerned/blind to race and not anti Semitic. Whilst therefore perhaps a skirting of the elephant in the room this is a book about the civilian so that did not trouble me as I reflected on the life of an ordinary German.
The book moves on to Leni in the 1960's when she is living in a house which she has gifted to her best friend Lotte's son ( Lotte is a stand out character ) .The son , his brother, and father ( a brilliantly comic scene ensues when author interviews this triumvirate) want to evict Leni , her lodgers who refuse to pay rent, and her Turkish lover.
The book ends ambiguously with the reader still not really knowing who Leni is or what the news in the final few chapters presages for her and for Germany as we move into the 1970's with economic expansion but also the threat of terrorism and emergence of new political extremes but I was not disappointed as I spent a few days reflecting on this story . This is definitely a book to savour and probably one that I should reread . I'm sure Boll himself is well known to those more widely read than I but I would certainly say that the ywo books I have read are brilliant pieces of fiction which deserve a far wider audience.
In this story we do not meet Leni Pfieffer directly as her tale is narrated by a nameless 'Author' who interviews anyone and everyone who has known Leni during the period , thus our understanding of this enigmatic woman is fractured and we never really have her perspective. Perhaps that in itself is reflective of the outsider's knowledge of Germany during these years, we all bring our assumptions and cod psychology to bear on a people traumatised by those events in that period and whose history is dominated by guilt of the horrors inflicted by a Germany ruled by extremists but who also suffered as individuals ( the book graphically re-enacts the experience of the Carpet bombing of Cologne in 1944).
Leni is 16 in 1938 , a beautiful blonde woman who has the world and men at her feet as she starts work in her father's business. We then meet her lost love, her short lived husband , and view her other wartime life as told by her friends , in laws, work mates, and other acquaintances as her experience of war is a mirror reflection of life itself in Germany at that time. These years culminate in her relationship with a Russian prisoner of war and a passionate love affair in a church crypt as the bombs fall which result in her pregnancy. The book also goes off on tangential threads as the author follows strings of plot , including the Russian prisoners removal to an American/French labour camp with Leni searching for him on her bike, and the author's search for the story of the nun who Leni befriends which leads the author to an amorous adventure in a Rome convent whilst an apparent miraculous blossoming of roses occurs. The book only hints at events in the front line during the war and the treatment of minorities by referencing some soldiers returning and taking on new identities but Leni is frequently expressed as unconcerned/blind to race and not anti Semitic. Whilst therefore perhaps a skirting of the elephant in the room this is a book about the civilian so that did not trouble me as I reflected on the life of an ordinary German.
The book moves on to Leni in the 1960's when she is living in a house which she has gifted to her best friend Lotte's son ( Lotte is a stand out character ) .The son , his brother, and father ( a brilliantly comic scene ensues when author interviews this triumvirate) want to evict Leni , her lodgers who refuse to pay rent, and her Turkish lover.
The book ends ambiguously with the reader still not really knowing who Leni is or what the news in the final few chapters presages for her and for Germany as we move into the 1970's with economic expansion but also the threat of terrorism and emergence of new political extremes but I was not disappointed as I spent a few days reflecting on this story . This is definitely a book to savour and probably one that I should reread . I'm sure Boll himself is well known to those more widely read than I but I would certainly say that the ywo books I have read are brilliant pieces of fiction which deserve a far wider audience.