Wonderful! But needs some patience and a notebook to hand to keep track of all the characters! But it is so worth the effort.

Darkenbloom by Eva Menasse

The whole truth, as the name implies, is the collective knowledge of all those involved. Which is why you can never really piece it together again afterwards. Because some of those who possessed a part of it will already be dead. Or they’re lying, or their memories are bad.
It’s 1989, and in a small town on the Austria–Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say.
But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom’s door.
Still, though, nobody talks about the war.
Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions.
Until townspeople start receiving threatening letters and even disappearing.
Until a body is found.

This book was so beautifully immersed, not just in history, but in it’s sense of place. Austria and the small town where the book is set are so beautifully described that all my senses were engaged with the story. At first I was unsure who was who because we meet so many different residents. The author embeds them in their place, showing us who they are and what made them that way. In this way we can understand, psychologically, why they do what they do. We don’t immediately see a connection, except they share a hometown but slowly as we move into part three their stories start to overlap and the tales come together to create a literary tapestry of life. It spans decades! This is a description heavy narrative, there’s very little dialogue and a lot of back story some of which is violent, even prejudicial. You probably won’t like all of the characters. We’re following the history of this small town including secrets long held in the mind, many of which people would like to remain buried. As secrets start to emerge the tension builds. In order to heal and move forward everything has to come to light, to be expressed. Unless people are honest about the secrets they’ve kept the town will never heal. These are the finished article of the bloodlines fomented long ago. There is also an element of humour that I didn’t expect, a satirical tone that doesn’t trivialise events, but casts a witty eye over the residents. This is an unusual read that took a while to get into, but every single aspect that’s set out at the beginning gets it’s ending.

I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and publisher.

I’m doing a challenge to read books set in as many different countries as possible. Some I’ve read felt like they could have been set anywhere and didn’t really reflect that country. That is not at all the case with Darkenbloom. The location, country and setting were so utterly integral to this story. The town itself, the history and the local culture are absolutely essential to making this story what it is.

When first reading this book, we meet a lot of different residents of the town. We have a variety of eclectic characters, gaining insight into what they’re doing now, who they are and what has made them that way. It’s not clear early on how they are all connected other than as residents of the town. Some of these I enjoyed more than others such as the woman buying the pug. However in part three of the book, their tales all interweave quite spectacularly and satisfyingly. There are quite a lot of characters to keep track of as we span decades of history of the town.

This is often a strange book, there’s little dialogue, and often long pieces of insight into the history of the characters. This book explores the historic legacy of the town that still looms over it, the secrets people have been keeping for many years and particularly those people wish to keep hidden. This does reference historic horrors and characters do express prejudice.

This is a novel about lies, secrets and crimes of the past, set in a small town on the Austrian border. Inevitably, it deals with WW2 and the Nazi period which hasn't completely died, but given that the date is 1989, there are also issues of the reunification of Germany and what will happen in the future, building on this acutely troubled past. The tone is stylised: sometimes like a camera panning the scene, sometimes as commentary, and I was reminded in places of The Master & Margerita, with a kind of surreal edge. I found it all a bit confusing and never really entered the book in terms of engagement - something about the writing seemed to hold me at arm's length.