<p>Well, with the children we got a bit of a sense of who they became as adults.</p>
<p>Did we ever get a window into Viktor’s past? We know he never felt love before Liesel’s crush on him, but was there anything else?</p>
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<p>Maybe so, but I thought the reverse. I read it as slightly insulting–more evidence that Viktor and Liesel did not have the kind of mutual attraction that lasts a lifetime. The description of Liesel’s “elongated bone structure and long nose and compressed mouth” sounds more like a Victorian spinster than a lover. (No offense intended to spinsters :)). I might have been convinced had he pondered her ‘willowy frame, aquiline profile and firm mouth’ instead…but Viktor’s word choice makes me doubt him. </p>
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<p>I thought Mawer started out well with Ottilie. There is a rather lovely passage describing her on p. 89:</p>
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<p>That’s about it though. Going forward, she is relegated to a role of teasing Martin and not doing much else. The same goes for Marika. At first, she was intriguing. I thought we might have a child like Pearl from the The Scarlet Letter, especially in the scene where she runs ahead of Viktor and Kata in the garden:</p>
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<p>But Mawer never really develops this side of Marika. To be fair, his focus was on the adults, and his multitude of grown-up characters didn’t leave much space to explore the personalities of the children.</p>
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<p>Sometimes all it takes is a phrase, or a few well-chosen words, to suggest…worlds. Mawer would have had plenty of space to make the characters a little more like real people if he had left out some of the windy rhetoric about the house.</p>
<p>Psychmom, it’s true that Mawer gave us a glimpse of Ottilie and Martin as adults. We learn that the little girl (who was described only physically in the passage quoted by Mary above) had grown up to be a lovely young woman. Surprise, surprise! 
The reader smiles for a moment, then boredom ensues. Martin had become…a lawyer. Clich</p>
<p>Reading the passage quoted by Mary describing Ottilie, I noted this wording:</p>
<p>“the solemn structures of Liesels face and the austerity of Viktors”.</p>
<p>I realize that the word I’d use to describe Landauer House would be austere. </p>
<p>I understood fairly quickly that the house was the cornerstone of the narrative… but as its cornerstone, the house seemed a tad too dispassionate. The turmoil of the outside world caught my attention. I had enough interest in it to keep reading. </p>
<p>I find the ending a pastiche of improbable coincidence and a quick stab toward a happy (enough) ending for the reader that misses the mark.</p>
<p>(And … I don’t mind sex in a book, not even gratuitous sex - hello, Fifty Shades of Grey. I did mind the continual drop into gratuitous sex in this book; it seemed ill-placed with awkward/tawdry phrasing that pulled me from the narrative into a “huh?” I referred to this when I said I could have liked the book but the author wouldn’t let me. As long as I’m on a rant: not every single woman in the book - including poor Hedy Lamarr - needed to have a same-sex encounter. Really? It eventually loses meaning and makes the reader wonder about the author: at least, it did for me.)</p>
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<p>I agree. I didn’t mean you weren’t being fair to Mawer. I should have worded it as follows: “To be fair, given Mawer’s limited talent, he really couldn’t be expected to successfully develop minor characters considering his major characters are so thinly drawn and lacking in complexity.”</p>
<p>Can you guess I won’t be picking up another Simon Mawer title any time soon? ignatius, I wondered about the author, too. I looked him up, hoping for a little personal history to explain his rather bleak take on human relationships. Couldn’t find any clues: [Simon</a> Mawer](<a href=“http://www.simonmawer.com/biographical.htm]Simon”>Simon Mawer)</p>
<p>There’s quite a bit of info about Mawer here:</p>
<p>[A</a> life in books: Simon Mawer | Culture | The Guardian](<a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/oct/03/simon-mawer-life-in-books]A”>A life in books | Books | The Guardian)</p>
<p>I suspect that Mendel’s Dwarf is probably better than The Glass Room. Mawer was overreaching himself with this book.</p>
<p>I feel like Mawer spent a lot of time describing some of the main characters physically, but didn’t provide much physical description of Viktor. Is it me or did I miss that (really shouldn’t try to read when half asleep ;)). One passage (p 21):
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<p>^Mawer’s specialty is describing women. ;)</p>
<p>Sorry - I’ve tried to post twice and keep getting crashed.</p>
<p>PATM - I was in Eastern Europe in 1979. I biked from Warsaw, Poland to Sofia, Bulgaria. I also spent some time in East Berlin. It was an amazing experience. Many of the smaller towns in Czechoslovakia that are mentioned in the book are ones I went through - Ostrava, I think is one of them. I don’t think I was where the house stood - I kind of wish I’d seen it!</p>
<p>EmmyBet, You mentioned upthread that it was a language-learning trip. Which language? Is it one you still use? I thought maybe you might have some insight into discussion question #3:</p>
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<p>I don’t know either language or much about the historical relationship between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Looking around for information, I found this interesting summary: [Radio</a> Prague - Heroes or cowards? Czechs in World War II](<a href=“http://www.radio.cz/en/section/special/heroes-or-cowards-czechs-in-world-war-ii]Radio”>http://www.radio.cz/en/section/special/heroes-or-cowards-czechs-in-world-war-ii)</p>
<p>I never knew about the assassination of Heydrich and the reprisals described in the Radio Prague article. </p>
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<p>Mawer might have chosen to include a few sentences about this, instead of going on and on at such length about Hana’s sexual escapades with Stahl.</p>
<p>(In case anyone might be interested, another WWII resistance story that came to my attention recently is that of the Norwegian saboteur Max Manus. There’s a movie about him - in Norwegian, with subtitles - that is quite fascinating.
[Max</a> Manus: Man of War (2008) - IMDb](<a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1029235/]Max”>Max Manus: Man of War (2008) - IMDb))</p>
<p>My bike trip included basic instruction in each country’s language - Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian. At the time I was quite comfortable both in Spanish and in Russian (these days I could get around as a tourist in Spanish but am simply a bumpkin in Russian). Other people on the trip came speaking French, Ukrainian, and German.</p>
<p>In terms of the question about the book, I would say that in the '70s, in Czechoslovakia, most people over 40 spoke German, and those under 40 spoke Russian, probably because they were forced to learn it in school. Our experience was that older people were happy to speak German to those of us who knew it, while younger people refused to speak Russian with us, even when we made it clear that we were Americans and only spoke it coincidentally (well, actually I probably had learned it because of the Cold War, too - my HS hired a Russian teacher soon after the Sputnik launch, with some idea that it gave us an advantage). </p>
<p>I wasn’t surprised everyone in the book knew both languages in the 30s/40s. They were very close to the border, seemed like a quick train ride to Vienna, in fact. Plus of course once the war started it would be expected that they use German. </p>
<p>I found it interesting that people there in 1979 were less bitter about the German oppression than they were about the Soviet one. Perhaps it was less fresh, or perhaps they didn’t associate it so closely with the language. Anyway, I was very disappointed that no one (except a few Bulgarians that I met in Prague) would talk to me in Russian. I did meet some English speakers, and heard just a little bit of their experience. But I could tell they were very guarded about speaking of it.</p>
<p>While it was clear to all of us traveling there just how serious the occupation of these countries was (and especially the dictatorship in Romania), it still was curious to me that much of WWII seemed forgotten. To come to Czechoslovakia via Poland, having visited the camps at Auschwitz and Brzezinka, I was really quite shocked that the Czechs seemed so calm, even happy, to be speaking German with our group. These issues and experiences are really so complex, of course. And I saw with my own eyes that the most devastating result of the German invasion was the complete disappearance of the majority of their targeted population. </p>
<p>So perhaps Mawer is making the point that Jews who disappeared really did disappear. However, I believe that if you are telling a story, omnipotently, you have a responsibility to treat your characters with care, and to tell their stories deliberately. I felt he toyed with these people, and ultimately just toyed with us.</p>
<p>Regarding the older Czechs speaking German, Emmybet… Czechoslovakia used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, where I believe the majority of educated people knew how to speak German back in the first half of the 20th century.</p>
<p>I know this partly because I used to have an elderly Hungarian friend. He said when he was a young man in Hungary the 1960s, everybody knew German, and and they hated having to learn Russian in school. People wanted to learn English, but its study was prohibited. You had to try to study it on your own, on the sly, and it was hard to obtain books in English.</p>
<p>Could it be that the older Czechs associated the German language more with their own cultural background and education than with the Nazis per se? I mean, the Nazis didn’t force them to learn German; they already knew it.</p>
<p>In some of the smaller European countries, it is essential for the people to know more than one language. Czech is a slavic language like Russian (Emmybet could probably tell us something about the extent to which they are similar or dissimilar) so it was probably not too hard for Czechs to learn Russian, though they hated being forced to. Hungarian is not similar to any language except Finnish, though it has some words borrowed from the slavic. For instance, the word for “German” is the same in Czech and Hungarian…therefore I happened to know that the character name “Němec” meant “German” before Mawer told us on p. 233 that it did.</p>
<p>Thanks EmmyBet and NJTheatreMOM. Your posts give me a better sense of the nuances of language in that part of the world, particularly during the war years. </p>
<p>I wonder if Simon Mawer already had a familiarity with German and Czech before he began The Glass Room. He seems interested in the way people shift from one language to the other depending on the circumstances. There is an exchange between von Abt and the construction foreman that I suspect Mawer intended to reflect a grander theme of how we human beings deny our similarities and our common humanity in our rush to throw ourselves into conflict:</p>
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‘You know we had a fight the other day? On the site, right here. Something about politics, a Czech speaker and a German speaker and the stupid thing was, the Czech was called Mlyn</p>
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<p>Ditto!</p>
<p>And thanks to Mary for the Radio Prague - Heroes or cowards? Czechs in World War II link.</p>
<p>I have mentioned what I didn’t like about the book but have given short shrift to what I did like. So … I liked the setting - time and place. I found the changing role the house played throughout the tumult of the times the focal point point of the narrative: not the house, not the characters, but the way the characters adapted the house to their needs. I liked that history swirled around the glass house throughout the narrative … hints of history may be more accurate terminology here. History I’m now learning about in greater detail. </p>
<p>EmmyBet Your personal experiences have enriched the discussion. Thanks for sharing them.</p>
<p>My favorite books recently have been fictional stories set in historical times, e.g., Invisible Bridge, Guernsey…, Hedgehog, Sarah’s Key, so, I started this book with high hopes. I did learn something of the times, but found the storyline shallow. Victors affair began with real promise, but just drifted off.</p>
<p>Emmybet, your experience sounds wonderful. When people add historical facts about the time period and the author, it adds to my understanding.</p>
<p>I think the glass house was a sanctuary to Liesel; I believe she felt she could live there untouched by war or betrayals. Victor worked in the real world, and had to adapt his line of luxury cars to fit the new needs. He was prepared to leave the house long before Liesel. It was never a house for children; their happy times were playing outside. I don’t think the house defined them the way it did the adults, even the Germans and the Russian woman who seduced the housekeeper.</p>
<p>An apology that my comment is out of turn, but just had a chance to catch up on this thread.</p>
<p>Thanks again to Emmybet for sharing her insights!
Bookworm I was so taken with The Invisible Bridge as well-a difference between the two books is that I cared so very much for the characters in the Invisable Bridge-really liked them and were pulling for them on a personal level. Mawr’s book left me feeling removed emotionally from the main characters.
Of course in reality we all do have compassion for anyone in these circumstances-but it was hard to feel close to the occupants of The Glass House.</p>
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I wouldn’t use the word “seduction” in this context ;)…</p>
<p>I guess I meant seduction in that it was life or not, if the housekeeper could not perform. Same as I felt about Hana and the German Stalh. Or even, Hedy L having to satisfy Hana to make her escape to,America. Sex is power in this novel. To live one has to perform. </p>
<p>PA-t-mom, have you read Hedgehog? I so wanted those characters to find fulfillment. I think that was my favorite book in past 4 years. I just adore book clubs, for inspiring me to read books I would have never known about. I await Mary’s next selection.</p>
<p>I’m glad people appreciated my (very subjective and limited due to memory) perceptions.</p>
<p>I don’t envy writers who write historical fiction. It’s a big responsibility.</p>
<p>This may be way too obtuse, but “sex” itself is a character in this book. People are so driven by it that they seem to be able to focus on little else. No one seems to be able to have real friendships, do real work, or practically even have a conversation - they end up slaves to either their own or someone else’s sex drive. It reminded me of Zola, in that way. </p>
<p>People whose lives weren’t based on their or another’s sexual obsession pretty much disappeared from the story - Kata in the concentration camp (he didn’t want to tell us about the guards who raped her?), the architect who went to “Michigan” (I still think he was the only truly interesting character in the book), and Hedy, who escaped to have some real adventures outside of the novel.</p>