Customer Reviews

Kaput!

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Wonderful, moving, complex, compassionate. There are several astute reader comments already written in reviews for this book on this site so I will just add one thing. In addition to being an astonishingly well-crafted portrait of Nazi society, of individual dreams and disappointments under a cruel dictatorship, I believe that Eldred-Grigg has written Kaput! as a mirror for the reader to examine his or her own life--somewhere in this vast novel, if we are honest, we can all find someone like ourselves--and to realize that each choice we make, each of our relationships, provides us with the opportunity to affect the lives of those around us in either positive or negative ways. So often readers hold books at arms' length; it is easy to pass judgment on others, whether on characters in a book, or on our neighbors. Few books combine brilliant story-telling with profound moral value. Kaput! is one such book.

The book starts slowly with the daily life of Aryan women in Berlin on the verge of World War Two. We meet the `nice' young wife Betty, her outrageous mother Klara, her dedicated Nazi neighbor Frau Grau, and a whole host of other varied characters. Afterwards we follow all these new friends and enemies through the War. You start to dread the day when the Allies will begin dropping bombs on your new friends. The day comes, and soon your friends start to be crippled, murdered ... by the good guys, the Allies! The themes and characters of the novel are timeless. The book deals with love, trust, power. We encounter generosity and selfishness, kindness and cruelty, desperation and passion. You need to be patient with the book, though. Think of it as a longterm investment for your mind and your heart. No one is murdered or falls madly in love on the first page, and it takes quite a few chapters for the action to pick up. But pick up it does, and accelerates into a ravagingly powerful novel from there.

This novel is the greatest read I've come across for years. It's tough, it's gritty, it's intelligent like very few works of fiction - but it's full of warmth and gentle irony.

It's a story about women. But it's not just a typical `woman's book.' It's about war and death and babies and fighting to stay alive and dancing to the sound of swing in wartime Berlin.

Nobody has ever told this story till now! I've always been fascinated by the question of what it was like to be an ordinary kind of woman who had the bad luck to live inside the `Evil Empire' of Nazi Germany. And the bad luck to live under the bombs dropped by us Allies. Lots of books have come my way telling me about what it was like to be a heroic resistance fighter, or a persecuted Jew, under the German Reich. I've never till now read a book about living, feeling, confused civilian women - women like you and me - who're too busy trying to put food on the table and cope with the bombs to be able to be heroic. Maybe theirs is the real heroism.

A group of great characters - bossy snobbish mother, wisecracking sister-in-law, cute kid, lots and lots of characters, all centered on the wonderfully deftly portrayed Betty. Betty's a young mother, and she's the heart of the story.

Beautifully written, without being smartly arty. You can tell that each word has been carefully chosen, but you don't have to slow down to admire the artistry. You just want to keep reading, because you care - you care about the characters, you care about their lives, and you come to care about the whole big rowdy city of Berlin.

A big book, too - and you don't find a lot of really `big' books these days. It's the sort of book you lose yourself in for days or weeks, coming to know all the characters. And it's a shock to emerge from reading the pages and realise you're empathising with the people your parents or grandparents were told to hate and fear during the Second World War.

A beautiful, readable work that has heaps to say to anyone interested in women and war.