This is an intelligent, taut thriller set in WWII Berlin. Sigrid's husband is fighting on the Eastern Front. She's a stenographer, living with her hard-to-please mother-in-law. Life goes on, in its drab and difficult way until she meets and falls in love with Egon, a Jew: and at more or less the same time, Ericha, who works with a group who hide Jews from the authorities, then helps move them on. But who can you trust in this game of cat-and-mouse? Is your enemy always your enemy? And can your friend be trusted? This is a morally suspenseful read, coloured with telling imagery, and understated conversations. Perhaps the ending was rather rushed, rather tidied up. But I was eager to turn the pages, though not so eager to leave the drab, dismal and terrifying world into which I had been thrust. ( )

I get that people liked the setting (certainly many things were well-written), and I get that the suspense is well-done, but... well, you kinda picked a suspense-guaranteed setting. Is it worth getting a ground-level discussion of complicity wrapped into a story that will keep people reading? Does that redeem the use of a complicated, terrible piece of history as a sexy backdrop? I don't know, but I have a bit of that fast-food aftertaste that sometimes accompanies popular cinema, as if I've been cheated.

I see reading here that I should have expected a romance/thriller, but this book was passed on to me and I never read the back. I thought, instead, I'd get stories about the women in Berlin, with realistic perspectives. Here I was unequivocally disappointed. ( )

Very good writing.WWII novel of Berlin where married aryan woman falls in love with Jewish man. At the same time she inadvertently becomes involved in hiding Jews. This book has more sex scenes than I need to read and the love between Sigurd and Econ seems more like lust, but it’s another facet of WWII and reads well. ( )

I really liked this novel. First of all, the characters are realistic, even if not really likable (that being said, I did like Sigrid). There's no sugarcoating, especially of the main heroine, whose motivations are often obscured, but this does not mean they are less believable. I actually thought this is what it would probably be like for the most, and is kind of refreshing after reading dozens of novels where similar characters working for the resistance seem to be the embodiment of heroism and nobility.

The whole atmosphere of the wartime Berlin is depicted wonderfully, full of disillusioned inhabitants still gripping on to the empty promises of a great victory which would never happen.

The love story was a bit of a drag, with Sigrid constantly coming back to her cruel lover who was simply using her all the time. But if he hadn't been like this, the story would have less depth and would be a lot more melodramatic. I think it gave this extra dimension to her character, reminding me of Sylvia Plath's Daddy, Sigrid having fallen for a man who is, simply put, a brute (no matter the circumstances).

On the other hand, I felt like Sigrid was too lucky. In reality, it is very unlikely she would so easily get out of all the troubles the way she did in this story. This was a little too much, even if allow for the licentia poetica. Also, the end of the novel left a lot to be desired. The stories of some of the more interesting characters felt unfinished. Also, by the end of the novel I really wanted to know what would happen to Sigrid after, would she live to see the end of the war in Berlin and the Soviet invasion together with the atrocities German women had to endure later on. ( )

This isn't a typical read for me--this is straight historical fiction, and a novel about Germany during World War II, which has been covered over and over again. Gillham, like many before him, asks his readers: what would you do? And why?

That last question is ultimately the more interesting one, I think. Sigrid Schroeder is a woman hiding anger in heart and Jews in an attic, who sleeps with men who are not her husband but is offended when she finds her young neighbor to have posed for a deck of salacious playing cards. Yes, she grapples with the distinction between a good war-time German and a good person. What it means to betray an extinguished marriage. But she also considers some terribly cruel actions for equally terribly understandable reasons.

In a book about Nazi Germany, it's easy to resort to stereotypes. But Gillham has done anything but--his people are well-considered and deeply convincing. ( )