A haunting and powerful read set in the winter of 1945, exploring the aftermath of war through the eyes of young Benno and those fighting to survive in a refugee camp.

The things witnessed, the secrets kept, and the pain endured made this an unforgettable read.

Tough but gripping book that stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

Once the Deed is Done

A village in Northern Germany
A time of uncertainty towards the end of World War Two
A secret that there are only rumours about
Stories about the forgotten
A political struggle

What an interesting premise of a book… there can’t be many books that concentrates on the displaced at the time of the German surrender… so the storyline already had many things going for it..

I loved the multi-person narrative... I loved the different perspectives of the different characters embroiled in this single event in time – a time of uncertainty – not knowing what’s happening and what’s going to happen and how this is going to affect their lives moving forwards. It’s very interesting viewing the events unfolding through the different characters affected by the storyline in completely different ways – you’ve got the English Red Cross worker, you’ve got the young boy stuck in the displacement camp, you’ve got the young local boy who is a member of the Hitler Youth whose father goes missing as the Germans start to withdraw from the village, you’ve got the woman who’s son is wounded from the war but “finds” a baby left from one of the displaced, you’ve got the local school teacher’s family, and there are many other characters with appealing backstories and interactions that keeps the story ticking along and keeps it interesting..

On top of that, all the villagers are intrigued by the happenings at the local munitions works – and are shocked by the conditions of the workers that appears to be working there not knowing the full story of what’s happening there…

There’s so much going on and a vast array of characters that is beautifully written and sensitive to the people at a time of history that is not well covered but important nonetheless…

Many thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and Virago and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this fascinating book

In a small, isolated town near Hamburg the war is reaching its end. The soldiers in the forced labour camp are deserting and the townspeople know it's only a matter of time before the Allies arrive. A forced march passes through the town one night and the repercussions can only stay shrouded in darkness for so long. This is a tale with multiple narrators, from the Red Cross officer tasked with finding home for the displaced prisoners of war and finding families who have been split up, to the townspeople themselves, some delighted that the war is over, some not. In the background hums a darker catastrophe and shame. This is generously written, beautifully imagined and powerful in scope.

An unususal setting. Germany just before the end of World War Two.
The storyline was set up wonderfully well.
The bulk of the action is in a Displaced Person's Camp, but there is interacting with the local inhabitants.
Great Characters, Good story. The interaction between the people was especially well thought out, and was spot on.
I liked the fact that the setting and storyline was not the normal fare for books such as this.
I really liked this book, only spoiled for me by the end of the book, being a little hurried or cut short.
This is fairly common for modern books.
This may be so that a follow up story can be written ( I do hope so, I would like to read more about these characters).
My thanks to the author for the hours of enjoyment that the book has brought me, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Once The Deed is Done -centers around a German Village shortly after the Nazi Surrender and is told from the point of view of several people who are in the village at that time.
This was a really interesting book . I particularly liked that it highlighted that for the the thousands of people who had been displaced during the war , life did not immediately improve or indeed change very much. Their lives may not have still been in peril, but they carried on living in camps not knowing, if their loved ones were alive or dead or if they still had homes to go to.
The story lines concerning the Red Cross displacement camp were particularly strong and I really liked Ruth Novak, an English/ German Jew who volunteers for the Red Cross and runs the camp.
The author also attempts to capture the politics of a German Village , as the villagers themselves wake up from The war and the horror they have witnessed. I enjoyed this part less, as I was never completely sure what the author was trying to portray.
I am not convinced this book will stay with me, but I'd definitely like to find out more about what happened in Central Europe at the end of the war , so for that I am very glad I read the book.

Seiffert's new novel again resonates with her family story, being on the "wrong" side of history. She is from a German family whose grandparents were Nazis. Despite being raised in Britain, the Second World War was always on the table for discussion and her work cleverly distils the huge amount of information she must hold..

This is a multi-perspective narrative set in the countryside near Hamburg as the war concludes. The colossal backdrop, seen through the eyes of Ruth, a Red Cross worker, opens into the lives and perspectives on the aftermath of The Third Reich from both German families and separated families transported here. The horrors, the colossal displacement of men, women and children from their homes and families and what going "home" means for many of them. Russia under Stalin now includes much of Eastern Europe and, for the refugees, despite it being where their families are, is not where they want to return.

As ever Seiffert sees through the glass darkly and brings, for me, a new telling of a much told period of history. Whilst this is set in a short period of time, it is multi-layered slices of life that brings together the quotidian, world politics, resilience and the very worst aspects of humanity. All shown by characters presented substantively however little we saw of them.

I found it absorbing and thought provoking. What more can you want from a novel?

With thanks to #NetGalley and #Virago for the opportunity to read and review

Rachel Seiffert has I believe written four previous novel. Her debut “The Dark Room” was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize. Her next three novels: “Afterwards”, “The Walk Home” and “The Boy In Winter” were all longlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2007, 2015 and 2018 respectively.

So this her fifth novel (and the first I have read – and as it happens due to be published on the same week that the 2025 Women’s Prize longlist is announced) has to be considered as a prize contender, particularly as it returns to the broad themes and setting of her first and last books (the first three novellas connected to Germany and World War II, the last set in 1941 as the Nazis “cleanse” a Ukrainian village). The author herself is fluent in German and English and the book does feature some translated and untranslated German terms and brief dialogue.

A brief foreword sets up the idea of the book

At the start of 1945, up to 850,000 British and American soldiers were arriving at Germany’s western border. Across in the east, one million Soviet troops were closing in on Berlin. Six years of fighting and twelve years of Nazi rule had already displaced millions of civilians – among them were legions of forced labourers, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, brought to Germany from the lands it occupied and put to work in its war industries. As the Allies closed in, upwards of six million workers were still held there, scattered across cities and towns and villages, awaiting war’s end.

The setting is a town in the West of Germany – noteable perhaps only for its factory staffed by workers from Poland and the East (Polacks and Ostarbeiter) – and the book takes place over around a year from March 1945), moving between different third party points of view, of which the initial cast include: Benno – a member of the Hitler Youth and his brother Udo, son of the town policeman;
Hanne – wife of Gustav a labourer - their son Kurt having been wounded on the Eastern Front; Emmy – wife of Arno(ld) the town schoolmaster whose goes along with the Nazi regime to the smallest extent possible, including refusing to let his children Freya and the younger Ursel to join the Hitler Youth; Ruth – son of a Polish Jewish émigré in England who comes to the town as a Red Cross Nurse.

The British Army liberate the factory – rather shocked at the condition of the workers – and quickly turn it into a Displaced Persons camp which rapidly grows over time as more and more Displaced Persons arrive or are sent there (mostly but not entirely from the East, many if not most worried about friends, families, children from whom they have been separated).

And most of the story roughly alternated between the DP camp (often seen via Ruth but with a wider cast of characters – including two children) and the town (as the different townsfolk come to terms or not with their defeat, the British occupation and the presence of the DP camp). Sources of narrative tension and development include: the townfolk waiting for their arrested husbands/fathers or captured/wounded sons to be returned; the DP’s concerns about their missing being added to post Yalta as they realise the British have agreed to return them to their now Russian-occupied home towns; Gustav and Hanne’s dilemma about what to do about a baby who was abandoned near the house by an escaping Ostarbeiter; Ruth’s dilemma as to what to do best both for the two children and for a elderly Pole who translates for her (and sometimes us!).

There is a underlying sense that something mysterious (and likely sinister) has occurred – partly from the town’s memories of a night when a convoy of walking workers (including women) travelled through the town and sirens were sounding – the same night the baby was abandoned; partly from stories Ruth picks up from the DPs and tries to draw to the attention of the British authorities - of people moved on from this and other factories whose whereabouts are unknown; and all seems connected also to a sense of mystery/menace around a deserted water mill above the town.

And two late chapters which switch to different views – one by a British Major who literally stumbles across what has been hidden near the mill, another by the girl who abandoned the baby – confirms what we had largely expected.

Overall I felt this was a very competently written and very worthwhile book – illuminating a large group of people largely written out of history and sensitively dealing with the views of a range of people to the war’s immediate aftermath in English occupied Germany. However, one that is perhaps too conventional in literary terms for my preferences – notwithstanding that I can see it making prize lists (the Walter Scott Prize for 2026 would be one deserved possibility).