Category: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9781594489853
Pub. Date: July 2008
Date Read: November 2008
"In 1900, Berlin was a place where workers flocked in their millions to live in crowded tenements in the newly constructed suburbs and commute by tram to work. It was a city where writers and artists rented garrets and starved themselves into shape. It was a city without memory, a city without tradition; in Berlin freedom came face-to-face with casual indifference and nobody minded what happened next."
Lilly Nelly Aphrodite takes her first breath at the turn of the twentieth century. She's the illegitemate daughter born to a cabaret performer and will spend most of her childhood in a catholic orphanage.
Understandably Lilly is desperate for affection and will cling to Hanne, another orphaned girl, throughout life. When Hanne first takes Lilly beyond the walls of the convent, Lilly will see a Berlin she had not imagined at all. A bustling city, a crazy nightlife filled with tingle tangle girls and cabarets and most of all Lilly and Hanne will be witnesses and take part in the growth of the German film industry.
Each chapter opens with a vignette of German film history which will help to blend reality with the almost epic story of Lilly. She with her "large grey eyes" who will captivate men and women and be the darling of the film studios. It wasn't the path she had pursued but it was how she was able to survive. Just as Lilly's star seems to rise Hanne faces setbacks once and again.
All of this is told with the grand backdrop of a country facing a crises after WWI and the run up to WWII.
Through the decades the author writes about the reader not only explores the history of the country, but is treated to a tale of friendship, romance and fate. A wonderful historical novel.