HALF NOTES FROM BERLIN

A German teenager discovers his Jewish ancestry in 1933 just following Hitler’s ascendancy to power.

Hans Meyer is a 15-year-old in Berlin, the only child of a prosperous family. All around him he sees the increasingly violent rise of Nazi ideology—swastikas become prolific, books of allegedly un-German literature are burned, and the headmaster of his school, Herr Wullen, is arrested for neglecting to adequately adhere to the party line, while his teacher, Herr Wendell, is a Nazi fanatic who works his hateful ideology into every lesson. Hans’ instinct, at first, is to dismiss all this angry illiberalism as fleeting and assume that most will come to their senses and recognize the ritualistic humiliation of the Jewish population as “pointless exercises engineered out of prehistoric tribal biases that had no place in modern life.” But then the political turbulence invades his own life—he learns that his maternal grandparents were Jewish and converted to Christianity long ago. Once word is out, his mother, Anne, loses her job at a music conservatory. Also, he falls in love with classmate Rebecca Deichmann, who is openly Jewish, and is mercilessly bullied as a result. With impressive subtlety, Glants chronicles the moral darkening of German society as Hitler asserts his despotic grip over it and the grotesque choices this foisted upon so many. Hans is a memorable protagonist—wise and empathetic beyond his years but also, like any adolescent, afraid to swim against the current of peer pressure. His love for Rebecca is poignantly depicted by the author: “I was afraid to look at her lest my feelings overwhelm me. She was not classically beautiful, but her energy, her movements, and her daring words choked me whenever she was near.” However, the path of least resistance is depicted with great sensitivity and power, a vivid tableau from which this gripping novel draws much of its allure.

A mesmerizing novel, moving and intelligent.