Hopes and fears are nested within secrets and lies in this historical romance/spy novel that moves from English drawing rooms to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The same fraught layers form the novel, which sees pensive Viviane Alden travel to Germany with her flighty stepsister, Julia, to visit eligible distant acquaintances. The author’s note from Canadian author Cornwall (The Woman at the Front) explains that right up till 1939, intermarriage of English and German aristocracy was encouraged as a way to avoid a repeat of the Great War. The young women are matched with Otto and Felix, sons of the house, who, like Viviane and Julia, show how different siblings can be. Otto is a devoted Nazi who’s rising in the ranks, while his brother, a chemist who flaunts his family’s expectations by working with a Jewish Nobel prize winner, wants none of his brother’s fascist displays. Berlin during Hitler’s reign, and the fawning of international celebrities who thought the dictator a buffoon who’d soon disappear, are chillingly portrayed here. They form an ever more sinister backdrop to Viviane’s clandestine photography of wartime activities in partnership with a dashing journalist/spy. This has an air of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, with its sweeping vistas and wartime romance; fans of the debutante politics of Bridgerton will find intrigue here too.
