When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the whole world took a deep breath and pondered what would come next. We soon found out: an end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later. Within a year’s time the border between East and West Germany was gone.
But what hadn’t disappeared were the memories of the Iron Curtain, the Stasi dictatorship, and the struggle of many East Germans to flee to the West. Thomas Grattan’s novel, The Recent East, captures this moment in history, from the viewpoint of one family who were lucky enough to make it out—then found themselves back in.
Beate was 12 when her parents, German academics, managed to escape from their small East German town—first to Cologne, then Edinburgh, and finally Minnesota USA. Beate learns English, grows up, marries an American, has two kids of her own. Pretty standard stuff—until she gets a letter from the German government that the old house her family abandoned in East Germany is now hers.
When she returns to the “reunited” Germany, she finds a town in a shambles—even more so than when she left it. She’s befriended by townspeople and cousins she scarcely remembers, and lives on mattresses and furniture her son finds in the dump. Her daughter reads about the Holocaust and taunts her German neighbors about why they did nothing. Her son is gay, promiscuous, and just barely escapes contracting AIDS.
Through the eyes of Beate and her family, over the course of 30 years, we see something more mega—the rise of a modern post-Communist state. Initially a refuge for Eastern Europeans fleeing former Iron Curtain countries, her town becomes a stronghold for skinheads who torture these new refugees, then eventually is transformed into an oceanside yuppie resort.
Through it all, the old house endures. So, in spite of frequent backbiting and snark, do Beate and her two children, who try to build lives in a country where they basically have to start from scratch.
The novel skillfully raises the question of whether returning home is such a great idea after all. Gratton’s tone is ironic, understated and witty. Can’t wait for his next book. Meanwhile, I enthusiastically recommend this one.