Go Went Gone

One of the advantages of this lockdown compared with the first one is that there’s more access to the library service. It was good, and salutary, to have to explore what I already had on my shelves, but on the other hand a functioning library service gives me contact with recent books - particularly fiction - that I hate to do without. This week I’ve been totally bowled over by Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Go Went Gone”, which is actually five years old but still worthy making a special effort to catch. She is an East German whose whole life has been dominated by re-unification, and in this book her central character is a retired academic for whom that’s also true. He’s a bit dull, a bit lost, in no way charismatic. The book charts his growing interest in, sympathy for and relationship with a group of refugees. In different hands this could be sentimental or preachy, but this book never comes near either. It’s careful, thoughtful, totally involving, rooted in thorough research but never dull or over the top. Each time I went back to reading it I was immediately relieved to be back in its world, and now it’s finished I immediately want it back.