We Want So Much to Be Ourselves

A few years ago I tried to read the first volume of Victor Klemperer's I WILL BEAR WITNESS, a journal of how the author's life as a university professor of French literature in Germany changed drastically for the worse as Hitler rose to power and began clamping down on free speech and scholarship, as well as rounding up and criminalizing Jews, other minorities and anyone who failed to pledge loyalty. The journal was so dense with the mundane details of the professor's life that I lost interest and put it down about a hundred pages in. Not so with Stephen O'Connor's new novel, WE WANT SO MUCH TO BE OURSELVES (2026), which deals with the same period of German history and then some.

We meet the central character, A young Dr. Gunter Zeitz, show more in the 1920s, when he seeks out Sigmund Freud in Vienna and begins to study under him to become a psychoanalyst. He also meets Josine there, who will become his wife. She is Jewish, the daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate. Gunter, the son of a country doctor, is a lapsed Catholic and agnostic. She becomes pregnant and they marry quickly, before moving to Berlin, where Gunter joins the new Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Josine, it turns out, is probably bipolar, and will be a serial adulterer, causing deep personal problems in their marriage, extended separations and custody disputes over the child, Hannah (who later becomes an important character herself in the postwar Germany part of the narrative). In the 1930s we watch the Institute change drastically as Hitler comes to power as Chancellor. Gunter remains privately appalled at these changes, refusing to render the required Heil Hitler salute that becomes standard. He watches as Jewish colleagues leave the country and the Institute's core values change, as well as its name. His wife takes Hannah and disappears, as the war progresses. He meets Elke, a young student in training to be a psychoanalyst, but resists a relationship. People begin "disappearing." He interferes with the abduction of a colleague by the SS and is beaten severely. Postwar, a 19 year-old Hannah reappears, searching for her parents in the rubble of Berlin, finding help from an officer of the U.S. occupation army.

I hesitate to give away any more of this finely crafted and deeply absorbing story, which goes far beyond the war years, extending into the 1980s. This is historical fiction at its finest, blending the public and personal events of the Second World War years and the difficult, turbulent times that followed. It was, for me, a book difficult to put down, and I was sorry to see it end. If you are a war lit buff, this is a must-read. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA show less

This was a tough book to read. I found it hard to really like the characters, especially Josine. I got the book from Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program because I thought it would be interesting to see how early psychoanalysis was affected by the rise of the Nazis - (did NOT know that Carl Jung collaborated with the Nazi party!). The book is fascinating if you’re interested in that topic, but also just a good look at how ordinary Germans navigated this period. From discounting Hitler, to being outraged by him, to complying and being complicit. A fascinating, if not easy, read.

I am not giving this book a rating because I didn't finish it. When I requested the novel, I read the blurb and saw that it was a story about a Gentile/Jewish couple set in Europe preceding and during World War ll. Although the blurb did mention that Josine was a patient of Sigmund Freud and that Gunter was a psychoanalyst in training, I did not expect the book to dwell so heavily on psychoanalytic thought (and barely mention events in Europe in the first quarter of the book). I read the first hundred pages or so, and Freud's ideas were the main focus. There are so many books to read and life is short, so when I have to force myself to pick up a book even after reading more than a hundred pages, I just need to quit and move on.