The Weather in Berlin: A Novel (Paperback)

by Ward Just (Author) "ARE YOU QUITE COMFORTABLE, Herr Greenwood?..." (more)
Key Phrases: old baron, weekend guests, Herr Greenwood, Frau Munn, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Just's provocative novels (Echo House, etc.) combine sharp journalistic observation with an unsentimental view of human behavior, expressed in economical prose taut with ironic implications. His specialty is the depiction of men adrift in difficult times, generally in cultures that conspire to drain them of dignity and decency. Here, the central character is a 64-year-old filmmaker, Dixon Greenwood, whose first movie, filmed in Germany in the late 1960s, was acclaimed as an antiwar classic. But Greenwood has endured a 15-year dry spell, and is convinced that he has lost his audience and his creative gifts. In 1999, he returns to dreary wintertime Berlin on a fellowship. Many of the Germans he meets are bitterly mired in the past, disillusioned with the politics of the left and the right and resentful of America's prosperity. Dix feels alienated, weary, displaced until two events occur. He agrees to direct the climactic episode of Germany's most popular TV drama, Wannsee 1899, a nostalgic evocation of the glory days of old Prussia. Then a significant figure from his past reappears. While Just's insights into the modern world are trenchant, his characters too often declaim their opinions in sometimes tendentious and didactic speeches. Yet characters who spout jingoism, racism and self-pity are countered by more moderate voices that may promise a changed national psyche. And the intelligence that suffuses the narrative creates a compelling dynamic in which the historical forces of the 20th century are embodied in human terms. Author tour.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
Traveling to an ascendant Berlin in 1998, Dixon Greenwood grasps the chance for a second act when he is offered a think tank residency. A once successful film director unable to work for years because his audience has disappeared, Dixon immerses himself in the experience. Despite troubles at his Hollywood home, vicious winter weather in Berlin, and other distractions, Dixon transforms the clich‚ of the jaded American abroad into a quest. It would not be telling too much to say that in his 13th novel Just lets the good guy win. Giving the new Germany its due with lots of evocative prose about the country and its history, Just writes seamlessly, mixing spoken dialog, interior monolog, and narrative so that the story unreels before the reader as in a film. Recognized for writing that puts him among the best in the United States today, Just portrays a talented person, trapped by circumstance and lassitude, breaking free into new creativity and insight. This masterly novel belongs in every public library.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (June 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618340793
• ISBN-13: 978-0618340798
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #189,584 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Author at the Peak of His Powers, July 18, 2002

By	Bob Goldrick (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Weather in Berlin: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was not familiar with Ward Just's work until I happened upon "A Dangerous Friend," a very interesting novel about America's early involvement in Vietnam. Like that book, The Weather in Berlin has both a compelling plot and an immersive atmosphere. I strongly advise against reading the book jacket, or any review that tells you too much about the plot. Suffice it to say that the protagonist is a movie director who is famous for a 70's film about Germany in the 1920's, which became a cult favorite.

Having "lost his audience" since then, he returns to Berlin for a period of time at an Institute, and from that point on there are many interesting developments and observations on topics as diverse as directors and actors, Germany today and between the two great wars, European views of America and Russia, love and death, etc. But such a summary does not do justice to the atmosphere Just establishes, and to the way he somewhow manages to engage you totally in the plot while avoiding simplistic expressions of political ideologies and why people think and behave the way they do.

I haven't read a more compelling novel in years, and A Dangerous Friend is an excellent companion piece -- totally different frame of reference, same insights into character and history. I once read that the author Brian Moore (another favorite) "never wrote the same book twice." I haven't read all of Ward Just (I will), but I place him in Brian Moore's category -- just a wonderful writer and observer of human nature, whose minor characters are more "real" than many of the major characters in lesser fiction. This is literature at its best.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Berlin and LA?, March 13, 2003

By	Turtle "KGonzaga" (Ventura, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Weather in Berlin: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Weather in Berlin offers a tight portrait of post-war(s) Germany and strangley, current day Hollywood. How are dreams realized and at what expense? How different is the psyche of a director or a dictator within their self-generated worlds of audiences/volk, leader and led?

Explore the subtle words and beauty of this fine novel. The Prussian past is really not that far from Hollywood and Vine.
Well worth the read and well worth the work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another engrossing read , June 18, 2007

By	Keith Nichols (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ward Just's leading men are likely to be middle-aged to elderly gents of some renown who favor Borsalino hats -- hats under which some intriguing ruminations are to be found. "The Weather in Berlin" finds our man to be an accomplished Hollywood movie director in Berlin to spend time at an institute. His renown is based largely on a film he shot in Germany several years earlier, and this gains him acceptance into a group of filmmakers shooting episodes of a highly popular sort of period soap opera in a house near the institute. The book has to do with this relationship, which occasions a discussion of the shooting of his notable film and other things of concern and interest to Germans and filmmakers.

The author writes so well that it's easy to forgive the improbably high quality of dialog some of his characters utter. What is presented as extemporaneous conversation often seems a bit too insightful and well edited. Notable is a scene in which a 15- or possibly 20-year-old village girl who claims little knowledge of films reels off a concise and astute summary and evaluation of Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" during a casual chitchat with our director protagonist. Of course, this is his recollection of a conversation from years earlier, which might excuse its literary quality.