Lance Olsen

'Otto found that moment's ordinariness stunning.'

Lance Olsen's new novel takes place over one day - June 10th, 1927 - in Berlin. As the day progresses we get a glimpse of the lives of those who live there, the famous and the everyday normal people, artists and truck drivers. He uses a variety of styles and techniques: stream of consciousness, transcripts of newsreels and play scripts, poems, photographs, which culminate in the final paragraph being superimposed upon itself over and over, turned and repeated, until the text becomes just a black mess.

Like a camera panning over the city, we get a glimpse of an extraordinary moment, in that this is a still point between two other extraordinary moments. All of the characters that we meet have either been affected by the previous war, or will be affected by the upcoming war. The narrative frequently jumps back and forward in time to allow the reader to learn the fate or the history of a character. These moments of ordinary 1927 become fragile, transient, impossible to hold on to.

The overall effect of the book is a stunning exploration of art, literature, science and politics. As the characters interact or glimpse each other in passing, we get a sense of a vibrant and open city, a cultural and sexual hedonism that is at its peak. The prose is wonderfully lyrical and exact, and Olsen draws on so many 'real' characters that a reader might find themselves frantically trying to figure out who they are. This is a textured, indeed abstract, novel, taking its inspiration from Otto Freundlich's 1933 abstract painting 'Mein roter Himmel'. As Olsen adds on each layer the overall panorama of the book reaches its conclusion in an extraordinary final chapter. This is a remarkable and cultured book, that will reward a second and third reading. Definitely a strongly recommended 4.5 stars.… (mais)