GIVE MY LOVE TO BERLIN, a story I love but a novel I don't

GIVE MY LOVE TO BERLIN
KATHERINE BRYANT
Walrus Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1927, the beautiful city of Berlin is the gay capitol of the world. Ruth, a performer at one of the nightclubs in the city, and her girlfriend, Tillie, are living their lives and enjoying the freedom of the Weimar Republic. They are surrounded by a chosen family that includes drag performers, transgender women, and the prominent physician, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Ruth, Tillie, and their best friends, James and Ernesto spend much of their time at the Institute for Sexual Science, the hub of the queer community in the twenties and early thirties.

As the '20s come to a close, Tillie watches her father, a prominent lawyer, as he becomes more entrenched with the Nazi Party. Working in his law office as his secretary, she meets prominent figures in the Nazi Party, including Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, and becomes increasingly concerned as time passes that there is much more at stake than just her relationship with Ruth, who is also Jewish.

Tillie becomes privy to the planning of rallies, the plans the Nazi party is making in order to ensure Nazi victories in major elections, and how the Nazis are taking over Germany one neighborhood at a time. The novel jumps between the twenties and thirties and the early nineties and a young woman named Thea. Thea is dealing with the onset of her grandmother's dementia, and discovers secrets hidden away that her grandmother never intended for her to uncover.

Alternating between Tillie's perspective during the '20s and '30s as the Weimar Republic slowly gives way to a dictatorship and Thea's perspective in the '90s as the secrets of her grandmother's history come to light, Give My Love to Berlin follows the lives of two gay couples—Tillie and Ruth, and their best friends, James and Ernesto—trying to navigate falling in love, thriving in their community, and coming to terms with the danger they are in just by being who they are.

The author wrote this book for several reasons, mainly because she had never heard of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, or his work and she did not know that Berlin had been such a huge part of gay culture. After the 2016 election, the author could see parallels between the vitriol for the queer community in many parts of the United States and the way queer people were being treated as the Nazis gained power, particularly in Berlin. Now, with all the anti-drag and anti-transgender legislation, it is more important than ever to tell these stories so we can keep them from repeating in the future.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The reviews of this book on Goodreads are very divided. Many apparently Jewish reviewers seem to take exception to the author's inclusion of queer people as victims of the Holocaust. Many others seem to dislike the wooden prose. I'm in the latter camp. (Pardon the wordplay.)

It's a great idea for a book, one that would've come across better had it felt less like research notes made to fit...poorly...around fictional standards. It's not clear to me that all the plot points were thought through...why would a woman working for literal Nazis ever question a trans person feeling threatened anywhere at all?...so I was left with the idea that this story seized the author's imagination but didn't get the mulling time, or followed editorial guidance, to smooth some of the burrs on its edge.

I was utterly repelled by the amount of sexual violence, as I know I was expected to be; the response to it from every character seemed...off. One does not just seamlessly drop the horror of sexual violence. It's ordinary to mask the trauma as a survival mechanism, but this felt more like just being okay with it. Again, I think this is more about the author not taking enough time to think these issues through, or not having (or heeding) editorial feedback.

If the author ever revisits the story with a strong editorial eye, this could be a good, interesting, involving novel. As it is, this is not a great read. I'm disappointed and saddened to say it.