Julia Franck (1) (1970–)

This novel - which seems to be based at least loosely on the lives of the sculptor Ingeborg Hunzinger (Franck's grandmother) and her children - rather unexpectedly marries a Werther-like tragic-poet plot with the same sort of conflict between generations that informs a lot of other German fiction from after the Wende. Thomas and Ella, born in the closing stages of World War II, experience the DDR as a closed, prison-like society, full of abusive uses of power, whilst their mother, a show more communist, Jewish sculptor who spent the Nazi years in exile or in hiding, sees the Workers' and Peasants' State as a golden opportunity and the only bastion against a repeat of the horrors of the thirties. It's a book that is constantly on the edge of romantic and political cliche, especially in the later chapters after the Wall goes up, but it is saved (just about) by the immediacy and oddness of the children's life in their very unmotherly mother's Berlin-Rahnsdorf studio. (Apart from anything else, there is the bizarre way so many of the scenes have to be played in the nude - it's like finding yourself in the middle of a German park on a summer Sunday...) show less

How much to events outside of our control affect our lives? Quite a bit according to Julia Franck.

The story starts in with a young boy, Peter, being abandoned by his mother on a railway station as they try to escape the Red Army’s advance in Eastern Germany. The rest of the novel follows his mother's life and the events that lead up to this heartbreaking event.

Helene Wursich is a clever young girl born in the small town of Bautzen, on the border of Germany and Poland. Her Jewish mother show more shows signs of increasing mental instability, while her father is seriously injured during the WWI and dies shortly after returning home.

Helena and her older sister Martha run their house in Bautzen but finally they desert their mother when they are invited to live with their aunt in Berlin. Their aunt lives a frantic debauched bohemian lifestyle.

During this time Helene finds love, is bereaved and still suffering from grief marries a Nazi engineer who takes her out of the city and uses her 'mischling' status to abuse her and finally desert her and their newly-born son. The book closes as it started – with Peter, now as a young man some years after the war has ended.

The story is a meloncholy one which wonderfully captures the alienation and pressures of civilian life in Germany during the period covered by the two world wars. There is love but it comes at a price and whilst I don't agree with her reasons for the abandonment I do at least understand them.

The story isn't an easy one to read but it is beautifully written but my real criticism is that there isn't one speech mark throughout. I really do not understand the reason why and felt it distracted me unnecessarily as I had to work out if it a character is speaking or if it was simply part of the narrative. show less

Everyone seems to love this book. It's being compared with Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but I don't see it. The story was gripping, but I didn't like any of the characters, not even the little boy. I couldn't care less about this woman and I was angry that she repeated her own mother's faults. I did finish it because it was for my bookclub, but if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have finished it.
I really don't mind drama in a book, terrible things happen, but I at least want to sympathize show more with one character and there was just nothing to hold on to. I understand that that is the attraction for a lot of people, but not for me. A very depressing book.... show less

Translated from the German by Anthea Bell

Winner of the German Book Prize

Most novels that explore the events of the Holocaust focus on the ‘Before’ and ‘After’-showing the events chronologically and the resulting impact. However, The Blindness of the Heart takes a reverse approach and begins by revealing a disturbing ‘After’: a young woman abandons her young son at a train station and disappears. We see how they’ve lived in horror for months, but his abandonment is still show more shocking. Then the author, Julia Franck, takes us back in time to the early years of this young woman, and the events that lead up to a lost little boy, confused, hungry and alone.

The mother is Helene, and her family is dysfunctional and damaged long before the Holocaust begins. Her identity as a person is in question before her identity as a Jew becomes relevant. As a nurse she helps care for her ailing father while trying to deal with her mentally ill mother. She thinks she finds a future, but nearly everything she is close to is taken away. She finds a way out of the impending doom by marrying a German who helps her with false papers that identify her as Anna, a German citizen, but their marriage yields nothing but the child. She raises him alone while working long hours in the hospital, assisting German doctors in the maternity ward, as well as in the forced sterilization of some female patients. Her son, Peter, is often left alone while she works, and while they remain together it’s clear she’s drifted away long before she leaves him literally.

The book is incredibly painful. A few times I put it down just to get away from the grief. The author makes a tremendous gamble by having her lead character do something that appears unforgiveable right off the bat. She is counting on the reader to ponder the back story and conditions of the woman’s life and see if her decision made sense. She shows how emotionally abandoned Helene had been, and the ugliness that fills her life. The problem is, despite Helene’s previous suffering, it’s very difficult to get over the impact of the first few pages of the book. The result is a tension that carries through the book and makes the narrative so compelling.

One factor I found fascinating was the details of the nurses and their struggles in Germany. The endless shifts, multiple duties, and repellent activities in their wards were well detailed, and a part of Nazi history that I wasn’t aware of. The fact that Helene works with new mothers is a link emotionally with her own insane mother and her own flawed nurturing. What motherhood means is an underlying theme, and the title makes you consider what kind of love is blind.

Additionally, Franck creates an unforgettably tense scene in which the hungry mother and son go mushroom hunting, and find themselves in flight to escape hunters that are not after animal prey. As she runs frantically, she appears to be hallucinating as she considers her escape route, Peter’s whereabouts, and the various ingredients for different recipes to cook, all spinning through her head at once. Her actions in the forest foreshadow what is to come.

In a few places I found Helene/Anna’s character to be incredibly cold. I understand that under her circumstances, self-preservation required her to withdraw emotionally. And very few aspects of her life were really under her control. Yet there was an element of simple kindness she seemed to lack, or perhaps, it was all used up. In any case, the glimpse we get of Peter's future shows how the cycle of pain is completed. show less