Naomi Wood's novel is a blend of fact and fiction, unsettling and disturbing historical fiction informed by art, specifically the influential Bauhaus art movement in Germany that began post WW1, with Walter Gropius's minimalist take on architecture. In 1934, Paul Beckermann fled Germany and the Third Reich that had taken over the country for England, only for his haunted past with secrets to raise its head when an old friend invites him to the funeral of Walter Konig, a man for whom he harbours resentment and blamed him for the tragic death of his adored Charlotte. This triggers his reflections back to when he was a young man n 1922, when he was part of a group of 6 idealistic art students at the Bauhaus Art School, urged to look beyond the normal and ordinary, to see the other more radical possibilities in the expression of their art and creativity under the Weimar Republic.

The background of the tensions and turbulence of the rise of the Nazis influences and finds echoes within the lives and relationships between the group of friends, as relationships reconfigure and shift through the years. Their lives that take in love affairs, betrayal, obsessions, deception, guilt, drugs and drink, and the threats, horrors and dangers posed by the Nazi regime to the group and to the Bauhaus Art School itself, which moved to Dessau and then Berlin. In this beautifully written, character driven narrative, it is the intimate portrait of the lives of the six friends that dominate as Paul's self deceptions and secrets are revealed. Wood evokes the historical period brilliantly with her rich descriptions and details, I particularly appreciated the information on the Bauhaus movement. This is likely to appeal to those interested in Germany at this time and/or the Bauhaus Art Movement. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan.