The Good Germanrown Christmas

I loved the book and couldn't put it down. It is so good that the feeling and rhythm of it stays - long after you have put it down. I am moving on to another of his books.

This is not the great American novel by any means but was a good, involved story that kept my interest through the entire book. Also contained some good insights regarding Berlin immediately following WWII.

First I must tell you that I don't typically read books like this one, but I love it! It is fast-paced, based in historical fact, suspenseful, and romantic. The imagery really takes you back to 1945 Berlin as it struggled to find its way, despite the ravages of war. You can empathize with the soldiers (both Russian and from the Allied Powers), and the German citizens as they dealt with death, distruction, poverty, guilt, and violence. In every chapter there is something to keep you reading and wanting to know more. I highly recommend this book. Since reading it, I have passed it on to two other people who have loved it as much as I did.

As others have said, The Good German is a blend of historical fiction, a spy-thriller and romance. When I began reading it, I worried that one of these elements would simply be used as a ploy to interest us in an otherwise unremarkable novel. It would be easy to cloak a run-of-the-mill love story or spy-thriller in such a dramatic historical setting. Kanon, however, never abuses this history. In fact, the moral dilemmas of WWII are at the center of this book, examined both in the broad context of the broken environment as well as the specific context of the character's relationships. Kanon refuses to provide simple answers to the atrocities of WWII. While the twists and turns of the plot had me turning the pages, threaded throughout is the question, "How could the Germans do it?" Kanon's exploration of this question, placed within such a vivid recreation of post-war Berlin, led me to set the book down on numerous occasions, lost sometimes in thought and sometimes in despair. The romance felt a little more forced than other scenes, sometimes being a little boring or even annoying. Kanon is tracing an important story with the romance, illustrating the distance we must go to understand the lives of Germans under the Nazis, but in the telling it fell flat. He certainly has moments, but often it seems the couple is just tracing the same ground with seemingly no development. But this is a minor gripe in what is a heavy novel. Kanon doesn't back away from the gritty details or the inch-by-inch compromises humans make with evil, and he doesn't leave the reader to point fingers either. In wrapping such unrelenting dilemmas in such weighted circumstances, Kanon has succeeded in writing a good story- an important story.

This book takes place in Berlin 1945 and mostly is about the devastation, the beginning of the cold war, and the hero's bafflement that it could all have happened. A murder, which ultimately turns out to have political connections, is interspersed, and held my interest, but the murder is really subsidiary to the philosophical questions -- who, if anyone, is a "good" german? or for that matter, a "good" american or russian? I loved this book for its character development and thoughtfulness. If, however, you read mysteries primarily for action, this one is not for you.