It is that time of year once more, when I blog and I blog about books for three months as I raise money for the MS Society- last year as part of MS Novel Challenge, this year as part of the now open to adults MS Readathon. I'll post the link of donating when I have it...the MS Readathon website this year is nowhere near as clear or as tidy as the Novel Challenge one last year and I'm struggling to figure out how one goes about donating .
So first book off the ranks...Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood.
It is Germany in the early 1930s...on the train traveling to Berlin, late 20s Englishman William Bradshaw meets the fellow Englishman Arthur Norris. Norris is in his 50s and is a highly nervous and slightly suspicious individual but nevertheless he and Bradshaw form a friendship. Meeting again in Berlin, where Bradshaw is working as an English teacher and Norris is doing something vague that may involve importing, despite the warning of his friends Bradshaw is drawn into Norris's world and is fascinated by the characters that occupy it. There is Schmidt, Norris's sinister secretary who Norris is slightly afraid of; the Baron Pregnitz ("Kuno") who is a prominent member of the rising Nazi party and who has a thing for young fit men (including Bradshaw); Anna and Otto, Mr Norris's favourite prostitute/dominatrix and her partner/pimp; and various members of the Communist Party in Berlin. Bradshaw's commitment to Norris is proven again and again even after he is repeatedly given reason not to trust Norris, and ultimately Norris constructs a scheme that requires Bradshaw to assist with the connecting of Kuno to French business man in order to help with some deal Norris has going.
This novel was half of a combo book of two Isherwood novels written about Berlin in the 1930s (the other being Goodbye to Berlin- I read it in week 1 too and the review is coming). I was not surprised to discover that William and Bradshaw are in fact Isherwood's middle names, and that the characters are mildly based on real people as the novel does have that feel about it. However what with the frequent references to people's sexual preferences, to prostitution and to sadomasochism, and the barely veiled references to homosexuality, I did have to a bit of a shock as I kept reminding myself that the novel was first published in 1935 and that (as far I'm aware) it was never banned as books with this kind of subject matter published in that era often were. The novel is an interesting picture of pre-WWII Berlin and though I preferred Goodbye to Berlin, this is a lot of good here. It is very witty and the characters (even the minor ones) are well drawn- one of them, Bradshaw's landlady, reappears in Goodbye to Berlin. Personally I found the character of Kuno the most endearing (despite his being a Nazi) and pathetic (literally pathetic I mean) with his weird affectations , his love of boy's own style children's fiction, his hopeless lust for various characters and in the awareness that in Nazi Germany he probably wouldn't last long. I also found the presentation of Communist party quite interesting as they struggle for recognition and are then increasingly repressed as the Nazi party sweeps to power.
Very much worth the read in the end...
Next book for blogging, book 2 of week 1 Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan...post to come soon...
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