Ben Fergusson - The Spring of Kasper Meier

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but with reservations

The publisher kindly sent me a proof copy of this book to review, and I thought this was a good, well written novel with a remarkable evocation of post-war Berlin, but I did have my reservations.

The story is set in the spring of 1946. Berlin is still shattered and occupied by Allied troops. People scrape by as best they can amid the rubble and ruined lives. Kasper Meier is one man scraping by, dealing, bartering and "finding" things and information for people. He is approached and effectively blackmailed into finding an RAF pilot, and begins to be drawn into some very dark and sinister dealings. To say more would be to give away more than I would like to have known before reading the book, but it's a bleak tale set in a cold, ruined and feral city, redeemed by a couple of affectionate relationships and a slight sense of hope.

Ben Fergusson writes very well, in clear, readable and unaffected prose. The evocation of Berlin at the time is remarkable, and he manages a Hitchcock-esque building of tension by suggestion and hints of menace rather than lots of action and violence. I found the characters generally believable and well-painted and he makes important points about oppression and persecution of gays well and without bombast.

The trouble for me was that there was an awful lot of rubble, cold, insufficient food and barter with people we don't know, but not much else for long periods. It did get a bit much, especially in the first 120 pages or so. Even when the pace began to pick up a bit, I found it all a little sluggish - I'd really, really got the point and was thinking "enough with the rubble and the deals" - and it was a bit of a slog in parts, to be honest. I know it is important to build realism and atmosphere, but it is possible to overdo these things. It also meant that there had been so much dark, sinister background that when the genuinely dark, sinister truth was revealed it didn't seem all that dark and sinister in the context.

The book is almost 400 pages long, and I think it might have been better at nearer 300. It's still well worth reading and I'll certainly give Ben Fergusson's next book a go, but I hope he brings a little more of the tautness to it which this one needed. Three stars would be very churlish, but it's four stars with reservations, really.