Group Portrait With Lady (1971)

This is a fascinating book on many levels. It's a book about 20th century German history, human nature amidst chaos, an intriguing cast of characters, and political commentary presented with sarcastic humor within a complex but effective format. ( )

I liked it, especially the occasionally sarcastic commentary, but for some reason, it just felt like it took forever to finish it. ( )

I read an article that the novels of this Nobel Prize winning author were due to be re-issued by Melville House because his depictions of life under fascism were still too relevant to be out of print, so I read the first title I could find of his ahead of the availability of the new editions. This had the added benefit of furthering my ambition to read something from most, if not all, of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I didn’t really know anything about Böll before I read the article and this book.
I’ve read my share of literature on World War II. As a kid, I read about the battles and the heroes and villains and the (cool?) weapons. As an adult, I realized that war was far from cool and that it came at an enormous cost of human suffering, not just to the people directly participating in the war but even more so to the innocent civilians, the men, women, and children that are caught in the conflict. The “war” stories I read usually glossed over these collateral victims or gave them the short shrift of a statistic like a casualty number in the bombing of a city.
Böll’s writing is not like that in Group Portrait with a Lady. His novel brings to life how some of the citizens of Germany had to live under fascism and war. The profiteering, the concentration and forced labour camps, the conscription, the scarcity of basic needs, the fear of being denounced by others as a traitor or spy or un-German, and the gradually increasing bombing by the allies. One of the most striking discoveries in his writing for me was the ambiguous reality of the “end” of a war for those who were in it’s direct path. There seemed to be no V-E Day where they went from war to peace. During the weeks/months that transpired between knowing the war was lost (but not officially) and the cessation of hostilities and some semblance of safety nobody was quite sure what to do. You could be picked up by the retreating German patrols and shot as a deserter; you could be picked up by the Soviets and shot or sent east to a POW camp you probably would not survive; you could be picked up by the Americans, British, or French and be shot or sent to a POW camp with not much better assurance of your safety, you could be harmed by other desperate people trying to survive. Many people just disappeared, especially if their “papers” were not in order; even with your papers it might take a while for them to be “sorted out” while you waited in a camp. Years later, the characters in the novel are still dealing with the consequences of their experiences and wondering where their friends and relatives might have disappeared too. Böll captures this effect of war very well in this novel. I will definitely be checking out some of his other novels in the future.

Novel by Heinrich Boll, published in German in 1971 as Gruppenbild mit Dame. A sweeping portrayal of German life from World War I until the early 1970s, the novel was cited by the Nobel Prize committee when it awarded Boll the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. The story's anonymous narrator gradually reveals the life--past and present--of Leni Pfeiffer, a war widow who, with her neighbours, is fighting the demolition of the Cologne apartment building in which they reside. Leni and her illegitimate son Lev become the nexus of Cologne's counterculture; they spurn the prevailing work ethic and assail the dehumanisation of life under capitalism. In a larger sense, the work attempts both a reconciliation with the past and a condemnation of the pursuit of affluence in present-day Germany.