The Undertaking, by Audrey Magee
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The Undertaking, by Audrey Magee
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From a remarkable new talent in Irish fiction comes a terrifyingly intimate story of a war marriage caught up in the calamity of World War II, a much anticipated debut which has garnered prepublication praise from Colm Toibin, Hugo Hamilton, A.D. Miller, and Chris Cleave.In a desperate bid to escape the trenches of the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met, in a marriage of convenience that promises ‘honeymoon’ leave for him and a pension for her should he die in the war. With ten days’ leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin and both are surprised by the passion that develops between them.When Peter returns to the horror of the front, it is only the dream of Katharina that sustains him as he approaches Stalingrad. Back in Berlin, Katharina, goaded on by her desperate and delusional parents, ruthlessly works her way into Nazi high society, wedding herself, her young husband, and her unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina find their simple dream of family cast in tragic light and increasingly hard to hold on to.Reminiscent of Bernard Schlink’s The Reader, this is an unforgettable novel of marriage, ambition, and the brutality of war, which heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new voice in international fiction.
The Undertaking, by Audrey Magee- Amazon Sales Rank: #238921 in eBooks
- Published on: 2014-09-02
- Released on: 2014-09-02
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review Praise for THE UNDERTAKING:Longlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionA Finalist for the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction"To write a story that doesn't allow for much sympathy, that keeps readers at a remove from the central characters, is one of the greatest challenges an author can undertake. That Magee succeeds as well as she does is impressive. Her terse style, cross-cutting between the narratives of Katharina and Peter, generates its own tension and momentum. Although Magee stays on the surface of things, she gives those surfaces traction and textures: The face of grief, dull and yet affecting...We can't see inside Peter and Katharina, but, then again, history is partly the story of people who don't look inside themselves."—Louise Thomas, New York Times Book Review"A common structural problem for a novel comprising two perspectives is that one tends to be more absorbing than the other. Not so here. Magee skillfully distributes equal weight, meaning equal pathos and intensity...Magee adds layer upon layer of moral complexity...Deeply impressive...Magee gives us an uneasy read, but it is hard to pull away. This is a devastating but quite stunning first novel.”—Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune"Irish journalist Magee’s first novel depicts with uncanny perception the rigors of war contrasted with life on the home front. Her compelling but realistic love story presents characters for whom most readers will feel little sympathy because of their unquestioning belief in the German cause, yet the story is all the more fascinating as related entirely from the Nazi viewpoint. Highly recommended; this is one of the most riveting accounts of love in time of war that this reviewer has ever read."—Library Journal (starred review)“A bold, honest novel about Nazi greed and moral blankness…Magee's cool, precise tone recalls Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, and, like Heinrich Böll, Magee is haunted by the everyday and the small people who are inseparably part of a great ravagement.”—Helen Dunmore, The Guardian (UK)“A powerful creation. Its denouement, which dramatizes the brutal behavior of Russian troops as they advance into a stricken Germany at the end of the war, is profoundly moving. Ms Magee’s willingness to examine the darkest elements of the conflict in a novel that still asserts the redeeming power of love is commendable. We should keep an eye out for her future work.”—The Economist“Sweeping, powerful, epic…Magee’s writing is fast-moving, with a great visual sense, and conversations so believable that you can almost hear them.”—Kate Saunders, The Times (UK)“A powerful and unusually intimate glimpse into lives we rarely read about in fiction—direct, shocking, unflinching.”—Frances Itani"The Undertaking is written with sympathy and skill. The narrative is tense and engaging, filled with complex undertones, impelled by an urgency and a deep involvement with the characters."—Colm Toibin“Absorbing… original…eloquent… a poignant reminder of the ferocious struggle for Stalingrad and its aftermath. [A]n impressive debut.”—Lucy Popescu, The Independent (UK)"A violent, elegant, unsentimental journey through hell and halfway back. This is an outstanding novel by a writer of huge talent and unusual candour."— Chris Cleave, author of the international bestseller The Other Hand/Little Bee“This is Audrey Magee’s first book – and a foray into a hotly contested historical event, the Battle of Stalingrad. She makes it fresh through a tight focus on the alternating experiences of Peter and Katharina, cleverly resisting the temptation to describe places and events beyond their necessarily circumscribed viewpoints.Magee makes exciting use of dialogue...the voices shine from the page...The Undertaking is an engaging and beautifully written novel, with an emotional resonance that remains long after you’ve closed the book. It succeeds in doing what only the best historical novels can do – making the past feel present.”—Kate Williams, The Independent (UK)"A bold and unsettling feat of empathy, all the more daring for its taut, beautifully understated style."—A D Miller, author of Snowdrops"Audrey Magee is a writer with great understanding for the force of history impacting on the lives of ordinary German people during World War 2. The story of a proxy marriage offers a perfect view into the urgency and magnitude of life with its doomed interior landscape of wartime necessities and moral ambiguities under Hitler's Reich. The Undertaking is a novel of wonderful subtlety and acceleration."—Hugo Hamilton“An ambitious and atypical first novel.”—The Irish Independent"Audrey Magee is one of the most exciting new talents to arrive on the literary scene. There is an emotional depth to her writing which elevates her to the top rank of contemporary novelists. I read her book with awe and gratitude."—Fergal Keane
About the Author Audrey Magee worked for twelve years as a journalist and has written for, among others, The Times, The Irish Times and the Guardian. She has a Masters degree in journalism from Dublin City University and an honours Bachelor of Arts degree in German and French from University College Dublin. She lives in Wicklow with her husband and three daughters. The Undertaking is her first novel.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful. Very Enjoyable Read By Frances Hennessy I admit to an obsession with WW11 related books and The Undertaking is an excellent addition to the list of books I've read relating to the period. For a first book it's a superb effort and I was in its grip from the first page to the very last word.Set in 1941 as the invasion of Russia rolls forward, Peter Faber is a young German soldier craving some home leave. He selects a Berlin woman, Katharina Spiller, from a marriage bureau and they proceed to marry by proxy. He gets his three weeks home leave and she gets the "status" of married woman, the promise of a widow's pension should he be killed & the prospect of fulfilling her duty to Hitler & producing children for the Reich. Important considerations for a young woman in the Germany of the time!Most of the book is written as dialogue and it moves along at a lively pace - I really liked this style of writing & I liked that the author resisted, what must have been a temptaion, to fill in background details. The sparseness of the text is for me the defining feature of this book.There is much great writing in this book but I will single out just one particular secton which I found truly heartwrending & especially memorable as an example - Katharina's brother has been on sick leave with clearly post traumatic stress but the military command insist he is fit to return to the fighting. Katharina & her parents are requred to deliver him to the train for the Russian front, he is clearly barely conscious & has no idea where he is or where he is going. They have to leave him in the carriage with his gear and walk away knowing he is going to his death - an amazing piece of writing IMO.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the period but also to anyone interested in more that just a simple love story.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful. It didn't work well for me, but that doesn't mean it's not good in its way (I'll try to explain) By Maine Colonial I'm an avid reader of fiction set in World War II, but I hesitated to read this novel. The setup seemed contrived, and I thought this might be yet another example of an author choosing Germany during WW2 as an easy, sensationalist hook. Mea culpa, I was wrong on that count. The focus is less on the unusual romance of the lead characters than on the corruption of the souls of ordinary Germans wrought by the Nazi state.If you've read the product description, you know this is the story of Katherina Spinell and Peter Faber, strangers who marry for reasons that are pragmatic in the wartime Nazi state. The couple unexpectedly fall in love during the few days of honeymoon leave that Peter is allowed to take from his harsh soldierly duties on the Russian front. Peter returns to the front and Katherina promises to wait for him in Berlin. From that point on, the story alternates between what's happening with Peter and his unit in Russia and Katherina and her family in Berlin.Author Audrey Magee chooses to show us the attitudes of these and other ordinary Germans during the war. She doesn't make them sympathetic characters. They've completely bought into the Nazi propaganda that Germans are the master race and are entitled to take land and goods away from their inferiors, like Jews and Slavs.Katherina's father is a flunky to a Nazi official and is awarded a grand apartment that has been confiscated from a Jewish family. No member of the family gives a thought to what has happened to that family; they believe this sudden access to a much higher standard of living is only their due and that the Jews have also finally gotten what they deserve. The illogic of their thinking doesn't occur to them, as Katherina's mother is overawed by the magnificent wardrobe the former female resident has had to leave behind and, in the next breath, says the clothes must be fumigated before they can be worn.Katherina is happy to take whatever benefits she can from her father's association and doesn't give a thought to those around her who are obviously far worse off, including those who are wearing the yellow star. Peter has no sympathy for the Jews and Russian civilians he attacks; he doesn't seem to see them as human. They are merely the annoyances forcing him away from a comfortable civilian life.I certainly wouldn't expect sympathetic characters in this setting, but one problem I had is that Magee's characters seemed to lack any kind of complexity at all. They had no thoughts, ideas or beliefs that extended beyond their own immediate interests. True, there are plenty of people in the world like that, but if all the characters in a book follow that form, it doesn't engage me.I was also surprised at how little "local color" there was in Magee's book. Katherina's story was set in Berlin, but there were no descriptions of Berlin landmarks, radio broadcasts, bombings, or many of the other things I expected to read about in this time and place. Peter's time on the Russian front was described mainly as a small unit of soldiers wandering around in terrible weather conditions trying to get to where the fighting is.There was so little wartime background in this story that I wondered for awhile if Magee had done much research on her setting. But I think that was probably unfair of me. This is a short, spare book, and I think Magee intentionally wanted to place a harsh, glaring light on the poverty of the souls of the Germans who slavishly followed Nazi propaganda into the abyss. She succeeded in her task, and that is admirable.It's not Magee's fault that I wanted a more fleshed-out story, in characterization and atmosphere. But the fact is that I've read books with similar subject matter that I felt were more engaging. For example, David R. Gillham's City of Women, from just two years ago, was a stunner. Or, the nonfiction diary that reads like a novel, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City, manages to be both laconic and harrowing.Magee's depiction of the banality of ordinary Germans' attitudes, and how that made the devastation wrought by Nazism possible, is spare and realistic. If that's what you're looking for, this is for you. But if you prefer a heavier focus on characterization and atmosphere, this may leave you feeling a bit flat.2.5 stars
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful. harrowing and horrific in equal measures By Christopher Sullivan The novel begins and ends with a marriage of convenience: Peter Faber marries a woman he has never met to allow him leave from the army for a ‘honeymoon’ and Katharina Spinell, his new wife, will receive a pension in the event of her husband’s death. The novel ends with the German people living alongside their Russian conquerors in their homeland of East Berlin. It is 1941 and German army are fighting on the eastern front on Russia soil. They are raping, stealing and killing their way through the Russian land unknowingly toward what has been described as ‘one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare’; the siege of Stalingrad and what would ultimately be the beginning of the end for Germany and Hitler. As Peter Faber struggles through Russia and its ferocious winter, back in Berlin Katharina’s life is improving thanks to her father carrying out the orders of the sinister Dr Weinart. Dr Weinart has the ear of the upper echelons in the Nazi party and one of his tasks is to recruit men to persecute the Jewish people.While Katharina and her family enjoy a new home, the former Jewish owners having been dragged from their homes in the middle of the night, sumptuous dinners laid on by Dr Weinart, where they raise glasses of champagne in salute to the brave German soldiers who are fighting on Russian soil, Peter and his infantry are beset by freezing temperatures, bloody battles, starvation, dehydration, disease and frost bite.Though the novel travels a road already travelled by many authors, Germany’s Russian campaign, the author Audrey Magee manages to resurface that road with sublime prose and dialogue. Audrey Magee’s first novel is a testament to her commanding authorial talent and will have established authors stand up, take notice and realise they will have to work harder on their next novel if they are to match or better The Undertaking.The Undertaking is dialogue heavy but this doesn’t upset the balance of the novel. The dialogue, not the prose, is what drives the novel along. The dialogue is where we learn about the characters not through the easy option of a third person omniscient narrator. Dr. Weinart is a character who is ninety-nine percent detailed and fully drawn only through his dialogue. Thankfully, the dialogue is crisp, realistic and lucid.(While Peter is on his ‘honeymoon’, Dr. Weinart asks him to help out with a nightly task)“’There’s nobody home.’ ‘They’re in there Faber.’ ‘Yes, Sir.’ ‘Maybe they’ve gone out, Dr Weinart.’ ‘There’s nowhere for them to go, Faber.’ ‘We could come back later.’ ‘Get in there, Faber.’ ‘How?’ ‘Jesus Christ, you’re a soldier, aren’t you?’ ‘Not this kind of soldier.’ ‘Move, or I’ll ship you out with those ####### Jews.’”It is to the author’s credit and writing skills that the reader’s feelings for Peter and Katharina fluctuate between distaste and sympathy. Peter’s plight, as he struggles relentlessly through Russia’s infamous harsh winters, watching his friends die while surviving by eating rats as his toes turn black with frost bite, is harrowing and horrific in equal measures. There are times when you forget some of Peter’s previous actions,“he had to...drag snivelling children from attics and cellars. He shouted and screamed at them, struck their legs and backs with the butt of his gun, slapped them across the face when they took too long moving down the stairs, more comfortable with howls of hatred than pleas of mercy...he took a wide band of wedding gold from an old woman. Later he slipped it on his wife’s finger.”The Undertaking is a pragmatic and understated story filled with believable characters. It will rattle the windows of your soul with its engaging prose and skilful dialogue. All this and the novel’s masterful sense of time and historical clarity belie the epithet of ‘a first novel’.First Line – “He dragged barbed wire away from the post, clearing a space on the parched earth, and took a photograph from the pocket of his tunic.”Memorable Line – “The facts are that I am starving and freezing to death thousands of miles from home. For what? For a bigger, stronger Germany free of communist Jews. Those are the facts. That’s why I’m here.”Number of Pages – 287Sex Scenes – YesProfanity – YesGenre - fiction
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