ŷ������

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey

Her previous novel The Beat of the Pendulum was on my radar as a book to read for a while although I never got round to it. That was iirc quite innovative - a “found novel�� made up of other material. Is this one also innovative?

Assuming we don't regard multiple narrators and a chorus innovative, then no, I'd say.

This novel returns to WWII Germany like her (NZ) Ockham prize winning novel ‘The Wish Child�� from 2016.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Assuming we don't regard multiple narrators and a chorus innovative, then no, I'd say."

The judges like choruses then as that's Salt Lick's most distinctive feature

I have Beat of Pendulum I think but not ever got round to reading it.

I liked The Wish Child more than this one.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I liked The Wish Child more than this one."

I thought your review was very persuasive R. C. I think this one is another hard pass.

I agreed with your comment that you don’t like the literary/commercial holocaust mix, Alwynne. A novel must have a compelling, central to the story, justification for including most aspects of the Holocaust: the concentration camps, or the victims or survivors. This sounds like a SciFi story that needed a real tragedy to illicit compassion and I’m not sure that is enough of a justification.

Writers like Rachel Seiffert, whose grandparents were member of the Nazi party or Jenny Erpenbeck, have more investment in that awful history, but maybe I’m misjudging Catherine Chidley. One doesn’t have to be German or Jewish to be moved to try and understand how that could have happened.

I’ll withhold judgement to more here read it, although RC, it doesn’t sound like you found the story serious enough to justify Buchenwald as the background, or did I misread your review?

I attended Catherine's launch of this title in New Zealand back in October 2020. She spoke, with slides, about her experience of visiting Buchenwald, about the Goethe oak in the middle of the camp and about the testimonies of the local people who claimed they didn't know what was happening in the camp. Catherine is a German speaker and translator, and did a good deal of research while on a sabbatical in Germany.
I should declare a conflict of interest at this point - Catherine was my supervisor for my recent Masters in creative writing and edited the novel that I produced.
While that may make me biased, I don't really feel that is the sort of novel that wins the Women's Prize for Fiction. Happy to be proved wrong.

Even if you’re biased this is good to know about Catherine Chidgey.

The mother of my closest friend was born close to Berlin in 1926, she saw the destruction after Kristallnacht. She said they heard rumors that people were being killed in the camps, but thought it was too awful to be true. I believe that the German people didn’t know what was happening, how could anyone think something that unthinkably cruel was happening in their country?

It’s very cool that this author was your MA supervisor, Marcus.

Hmm. I’m not sure I buy that. H*tler was very clear what his end game was. Just like our former president.

I only know what Christa told me. She is 96 with PTSD from the bombing of her neighborhood and seeing friends die around her, having her father knocked out with the butt of a rifle by a Russian soldier who heard there was a teenage girl in the house. She said she hid in the attic, heard the soldier coming up the stairs, he turned the doorknob, but then went back downstairs. She thinks maybe he wasn’t sure if someone on the other side of the door had a gun or if it was God, but after that the girls would hide at night.

I think if Christa knew they were killing Jews in the camps she would have told me that they knew, but maybe not. Maybe she and others didn’t know what they didn’t want to know.

About 30% of Americans believe TFG is a good man protecting us from Socialism and that Jan 6th was a peaceful protest so that’s probably not the best example of citizens knowing when a leader is evil!

David wrote: "Hmm. I’m not sure I buy that. H*tler was very clear what his end game was. Just like our former president."

David, that is one of the themes of the book. What people knew and what they chose to ignore, or where they chose not to look too closely.

I’m very intrigued by this now.

Me too, David. You read it and tell me what you think. :)

I will. As soon as I finish the IBP longlist and the 3 WP books I ordered yesterday.

Fair enough.

But tbh I might bump this up. Has anyone read it other than RC?

Here is a review from the Academy of New Zealand Literature website with a long review, if that helps:

I’m picking it up from the library tomorrow to hopefully read this weekend.

Now I’m really interested. I thought the Sympathetic Vitalizer was a SciFi machine to manufacture sympathy/compassion! I really misunderstood the basis of this book.

My very old German friend said they smelled something, but didn’t know, then didn’t believe not was bodies.

I absolutely believe people can know and do nothing, choose not to know, or risk their lives to save others, so now I want to read this.

Just purchased this on Kindle so if anyone else decides to go for this... let me know your thoughts. Best reviews on ŷ������ of all the longlisted books. I also quite enjoy a bit of historical fiction. I am hoping it's better than Great Circle or at least that I enjoy this more as I struggled through Great Circle.

It’s our in paperback in the U.K. in the next couple of weeks so I will wait for that.

Always prefer a hard copy but with the size of it (!) easier for me to carry around a Kindle sometimes. Also GY with the amount you read you must be retired and able to read in the comfort of your favourite chair. Remote Sympathy would fill up my handbag! :)

Retired? No far from it

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "Retired? No far from it"

Then you really do indeed fill me with awe and admiration. :)

Okay... so 20% in and I am really enjoying 'Remote Sympathy' a lot!

Multiple perspectives explored through interviews, diaries, recordings and letters. Don't let that put you off. The narrative flows seemlessly. Doesn't feel clunky at all. Great characters that have really grown on me already. Definitely has quite a bit in common with 'A Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' by John Boyne - but MUCH better.

It seems to get more and more interesting as the story unfolds and already I could see this making the shortlist.

I really like this so far!

I really enjoyed this! Her writing style is very easy to read and I loved the power in the details - the odd detail or sentence that would just cut through. I do think it could have been tightened a bit in the middle. I think this is a great inclusion in the longlist.

I am around 300 pages in to this and enjoying it so far

It does seem to be treading familiar if harrowing ground - but seems very competently (if not at all innovatively) done

Do you know this is I think going to go to the top of my list

Thoughts to follow

Paul wrote: "Her previous novel The Beat of the Pendulum was on my radar as a book to read for a while although I never got round to it. That was iirc quite innovative - a “found novel�� made up of other materia..."

You did read this Paul

Yes as we discussed on the Zoom call.

I went 5* in the end - it had to happen eventually

A few reasons

The book may not be that innovative but the author knows how to be innovative so I think was sensitive to the story being told

The book flows really well - three (four) voices and 500 pages worked because I just felt the story flowed between the different voices and in time so well - I suspect the author spent some considerable time crafting this

The imagery is really very clever - I give a few examples in my review

/review/show...

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "I went 5* in the end - it had to happen eventually

A few reasons

The book may not be that innovative but the author knows how to be innovative so I think was sensitive to the story being told

Th..."

Nice to see you enjoyed it to. This is actually the novel that has stayed with me the most. I thought how it flowed between characters was pretty flawless and appeared effortless. This is particularly impressive considering the varied text styles: diary entries, letters, voice recording and so on.

Really a stunning piece of historical fiction. And... topical/relevant.

This book will not make it onto my top list (about halfway through at the moment). After all those years, we are now going back to 'people didnt know'? The author can't be serious. As a German myself I would like to say that people absolutely knew what was going on in the labor camps. Everybody who wanted to know, knew. The general population in Germany might not have known about the 'Endlösung', the murder of millions of Jews, but that is a different matter. That mainly took place in camps like Ausschwitz or Theresienstadt, outside of Germany. Camps like Buchenwald didnt have any gas chambers, they were 'just' labor camps, and almost everybody knew somebody who was sent to one of those camps (Buchenwald was the biggest in Germany). Also: people knew about the treatment of inmates because in the early stages, in 1930ies, people still were released, esp political prisoners, like Ossietzky. And those people clearly were in very bad shape afterwards.

I thought the author was arguing the opposite. That at best the people pretended to themselves what to know. The proximity of the town to the camp and lack of concern of the population to what was going on is I thought the deliberate inverse of the book’s title.

And wilful denial is threaded through the book - for example all three main characters chose not to acknowledge something they know to be true and that lack of acknowledgment is central to their story.

Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer wrote: "I thought the author was arguing the opposite. That at best the people pretended to themselves what to know. The proximity of the town to the camp and lack of concern of the population to what was ..."

I see your point but I can only apply that to the Weimar chorus, not to, for example, Greta. She doesn't even know what the purple triangle means... And they lived in Munich before the move to Buchenwald, with Dachau just a few km away, and that camp was operational since 1933, and before the war, housed mainly political and religious prisoners.

I feel like everyone in the book is misleading themselves and pretending to themselves (and others) something they really know to be true. Greta’s husband worked at Dachau I think?

It's really nice to have the perspective of a German reader, Britta. I haven't read this yet, but it sounds very interesting for a novel to explore willful ignorance / knowingly holding false beliefs.

I hesitate to make this comparison, but we saw this phenomenon in the United States last year where a majority of r*publican voters claim to believe the 2020 election was illegitimate. It was an example of knowingly holding false beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary. Climate change denial may be another example

If Americans can knowingly hold false beliefs about these matters, it would not surprise me if German citizens chose to believe the holocaust was not happening even though they knew it was.

Just finished. Rating it 5 star. As the description of the book on the book cover flap says, the book is "about the evils of obliviousness." I have long wondered what I would have done if I had been a civilian in Germany at the time and have delved some into what they actually did in my travels to Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. I have visited camps, watched interview with survivors and civilians, and read. My review -- /review/show...

I believe that people in the big cities knew about the existence of labor camps and the rounding up of Jews, but not exactly what was happening there, as my 96 year old friend said they heard rumors, but thought they were too awful to be true.

As the war progressed the Germans people were living in war zones and probably didn’t know what or who to believe.

It’s hard to believe the Germans that lived near the camps didn’t know something awful was taking place.

I think I’ll read this next.

GY you know I hate to disagree with you, but this one is going right into the middle of my longlist preferences. Overall, I thought the book was well-written but way too long. I also felt that some of the storylines were much more effective and compelling than others. But for me it did not deliver on what I thought was an intriguing perspective. I was engaged it first and then it dropped off. I thought the ending was beautifully done, but that did not save the sagging middle for me.

I just watched a 45 minute documentary about the Nazi’s horrific “final solution�� and it was stated repeatedly that this was all secret, the SS did not want anyone to know what was happening. The shameful part was the British and the US intelligence knew Jews were being exterminated but did nothing. The Brits didn’t want the Germans to know that they were intercepting and understanding their code, and Roosevelt didn’t want to be pressured into doing anything and losing the antisemite vote.