I should like this book. It has terrific ingredients – sex, cruelty, madness, maternal viciousness, paedophilia and incest – the story unfolding during the grim brutalities of East Berlin of the 1960s, and its author, Julia Franck, is considered one of Germany's finest (her first novel, The Blindness of the Heart, was translated into 35 languages), but, but, but . . . As soon as I saw the words "dark fairytale of East Germany" on the cover my sniffer dogs were out: is this a novel or a "story" crudely dragged over an ideology? Sadly, despite flashes of brilliance – stunning depictions of maternal neglect and the inevitable fallout on children – inability to love, insanity, death – abusing stepfathers and greasy "lodgers" – the bonfire necessary to a whopper tale never quite catches. Herta Müller's The Land of Green Plums covers similar territory; if you really want a taste of living under vicious oppression, it has not been surpassed.
