The Berlin Girl: A Novel of World War II
Berlin, 1938: in Robotham’s third novel on a World War II theme, Georgie Young, a journalist and admirer of Martha Gellhorn, takes her first overseas posting. Robotham captures the atmosphere of a regime where everything tends towards war, where the chances for anyone who does not fit the new order rapidly and terrifyingly diminish, and where no-one knows whom to trust. Yet amongst the tables of the Café Kranzler and in the atrium of the Adlon some remnants of the old Germany remain.
The author evokes the Berlin of that time vividly, contrasting glittering Nazi party gatherings with the Adsels’ meagre home in what has become the Jewish quarter, where the family struggle to hide their disabled relative. The sense of impending doom grows, as Georgie finds herself pulling the window blinds down before she types her copy, “tattooing…thoughts onto the fibre of each blank sheet”. A colleague is found drowned, but no-one believes it is an accident. A go-between waiter disappears altogether. And what really are the motives of the apparently charming SS man Kasper Vortsch? There is a point at which Georgie is unable any longer to just observe and chronicle what she sees, and after the man she has grown to love is beaten whilst under arrest, she and he risk their lives to help those who are marked for destruction.
Robotham’s research is thorough, and her voice authentic: only once did I detect a phrase not in use until later. The aftermath of the risk Georgie takes is particularly satisfying, without there being a happy ending for all the players – anything else would not have reflected the grim reality of those days.
