Unfortunately this was a challenge to finish. I became more and more lost as I read this book, but forced myself to finish this because the publisher and netgalley were kind enough to provide me a copy. At first, this novel was giving me Anthony Marra vibes, but I couldn't follow the plot after the first leap in time. It was weird, the writing was good but I never understood why certain sentences were included. I could never remember how each scene started by the time I got through what was to me, randomness. With the exception of one subplot, Michael's story, I never really felt for any of these characters or cared what happen to them, I'm sorry Mr. Grattan!

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beate Haas, who defected from East Germany as a child, is notified that her parents' abandoned mansion is available for her to reclaim.

Newly divorced she arrives with her two teenagers to discover a city that has become an unrecognizable ghost town.

So like... I am not from a place that inspires a lot of international books, so let me tell you this: I had a wild ride reading this, because while the town in the book is fictional, it could 100% be the one I grew up in.

Absolutely surreal.

The author really captured North East Germany. The way the characters talk, the way small towns feel like they are just one small gust of wind away from falling apart, the destruction the far right has been causing there.

This is the novel I'd hand to my international friends and say 'here, this is what it was like where I grew up!'.

Loved it.

What I expected: a story about someone from East Germany, escaping, and then returning to a united country.

What I got: a dog’s breakfast.

The Recent East by Thomas Grattan is a multi-generational novel that pivots around Beate Haas, who defected from East Germany as a child, and then, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, returns to Germany with her two teenagers, Michael and Adela, to reclaim her parents’ abandoned mansion. The novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Beate’s childhood to her becoming a grandmother.

Where to begin…?

Firstly, I get the sense that every idea Grattan had about Germany, was chucked into this book – the immigration problem, the prejudices and inequities between the old ‘east’ and ‘west’, the rise of Neo-Nazis, and the AIDS crisis of the eighties to name a few. And on top of that, there’s a similar mix of personal and relationship challenges – characters coming-of-age and dealing with their sexuality, the break-up of families, and mental health problems.

Then a rock flew. Another. Beate pulled Adela back just before one landed where they’d stood. Skinheads pushed past them, closing in on the camp. Shouts grew to a wall. A Roma ran out, was hit with a sailing stone. Blood covered a neo’s forehead. One of the camp’s tents waved with flames.

There’s a lot going on in that paragraph (and not all of it makes sense).

Secondly, the blurb promised a book that ‘…illuminates what it means to leave home, and what it means to return’ and this is the one thing that it did not deliver. I was hoping for a story about someone leaving as an East German and returning to see the country through Western eyes. Attempts to do this were tokenistic at best. There was opportunity to explore this theme through the character of Beate, however Grattan made the creative decision to have her completely dissociate from her children and daily life on her return to Germany (so not much illumination going on).

Thirdly, the prose. Again, the blurb promised ‘gorgeous prose’ but I would describe it more as ‘purple’. I loathe detail that doesn’t add to a sense of character, place or time, and this book was full of such details.

The last university boy had treated Tobias like a full, waiting refrigerator.

Liesl spun on the dance floor, a cloud of cleavage and lace.

He stared at Adela with the scared regret of a scolded dog.

Beate’s daughter, like a Russian novel, was both admirable and difficult to hold.

And there were some lines that were just icky –

Michael had just gotten home from his job as a busboy; his skin and clothes smelled medium rare.

Udo’s lips were the pink of uncooked chicken.

Redeeming features? I really liked the cover!

1/5 And here I was thinking I’d made it through 2022 without a one-star read…

I received my copy of The Recent East from the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a wonderful intergenerational family story, in a setting that I haven't read much about. The shifting timelines really helped the story move along. I love books that explore the concept of what home means, and what family means, and this was a beautiful exploration of those topics.

This is my favorite kind of book…a family defects from East German and then returns decades later to revisit. The writing is wonderful as is the process the author takes us through as we reflect on what home is and the power of it even if you don’t live there anymore. Highly recommend.

While this book was beautifully written, the characters being scattered through time felt disjointed to me and made this a difficult read. It took me several attempts to get through it, and I kept thinking it would pick up but it never really did.

The book follows three generations of characters, and chronicles their trials as migrants moving from Germany, and eventually back again after the reunion of the country. Not my usual kind of read, but I thought it sounded like an emotional story that I would enjoy. Unfortunately this one missed the mark for me.

I will say again that the writing was absolutely beautiful but with patchy storylines I was just not motivated to keep reading.

I thought this book was fun and entertaining. I was fascinated by the story and had a great time. Definitely would recommend it.

Thomas Grattan explores how the nuances of family dynamics and generational history form our identity in The Recent East. This is a slow burn story with the backdrop of a small German coastal town, Grattan has an interesting voice and a knack for exemplifying human vulnerability and larger truths through storytelling. A smart book that takes readers on a journey about the messiness of unraveling who we truly are and how did we get there. Brimming with themes of family, love, identity, and fortitude, and yet it is also an wonderful debut.

I'm normally not huge ah out when books have a big historical element, but this story hooked me right from the start! I loved how the story bounced a round between the different time periods, and I found the characters very realistic and engaging. Will definitely be looking over it for another book from this author!

I truly loved this book- for the unique setting of modern Germany and the compelling characters of Beate, Michael and Adela. The story follows Beate's defection from East Germany as a child, her travels to America, and finally her return to her childhood home in East Germany with her children. I didn't realize modern literature was lacking a storyline set in modern Germany until this one (there are so many books at WWII) but this one expertly paints the picture of this setting. The book explores sexuality, family, immigration and acceptance and delves into what it means to come home.

I think this is a case of a novel just not being for me. I really wanted to like this book! I made it about a quarter in and I just did not connect to the initial plot set up or characters.

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. Very captivating with amazing character development. Restarting a life after her parents passed away and left her a house in her home country she moves her and kids to this new place to start over. This isn’t just new for her but also for her family. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The words of this one swam on the page for me - I didn't feel a strong connection to this one, although I could tell great care went into crafting this story. Forgettable for me, but I can see how this is a stand out for some.

This was a great debut novel by Thomas Grattan. I loved how he was able to portray this multigenerational family's story of fleeing from East Germany after the Berlin wall was built. The author shows all of the trials of what a family goes through with the divorce and different events in their lives while reuniting again. This book was one I was not able to put down as I dove into the lives of this family and was able to feel what they went through. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this story!

I enjoyed this book. The characters felt real to me and it was an addicting story. I will be recommending this to my friends.

The Recent East introduces novelist Thomas Grattan, and it’s an impressive debut. It follows a family of German-Americans from 1965, when the eldest emigrates from East Germany with her parents, to the present. I initially decide to read it because of the setting; it’s the first fiction I’ve read set in the former Soviet satellite country. However, it is the characters that keep me engaged to the last page.

My thanks go to Net Galley and McMillan for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

The story opens in 1965 as Beate and her parents are defecting:

Everyone talked about the West as if it were a secret. They leaned in to share stories of its grocery stores that carried fresh oranges, its cars with bult-in radios. Covered their mouths to mention a Dusseldorf boulevard that catered to movie stars and dictators, whole Eastern month’s salaries spent on face cream. There were entire, whispered conversations about its large houses and overstuffed stores, its borders crossed with a smile and a flick of one’s passport. Some talked about it as if it were the most boring thing. Others like it was an uppity friend. But everyone talked about it…

The first chapter makes me laugh out loud. Teenage Beate is mocked when she enrolls in school in Cologne, because her clothing is nowhere near as nice as what the kids in West Germany wear. Since her parents cannot afford to upgrade her wardrobe just yet, Beate comes up with the genius idea to alter the clothes she owns to make them look as Soviet as possible, and she “put on her Moscow face, worked on her Leningrad walk.” Sure enough, the kids at school are terrified of her now. She still doesn’t have friends, but she isn’t bullied anymore.

Morph forward in time. Beate is a mother now, living in upstate New York with her two adolescent children and unhappy husband. When the Berlin Wall falls, so does her marriage. Soon afterward, she is notified that her late parents’ house now belongs to her. She packs up her belongings and her children, then buys tickets to Germany.

Adela and Michael have always been close, but the move shakes their relationship. Their usual routines are shattered, and their mother, reeling from the divorce, becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative. What a terrible time to disengage from parenting! Both Michael and Adela roam the city of Kritzhagen at will, at all hours of the night. Michael is just 13 years old and gay; sometimes he doesn’t come home at all at night. I read these passages, written without obvious judgment or commentary, with horror. A new house, new city, new country, new continent, and it’s now that their mother forgets to set boundaries? I want to find this woman and slap her upside the head (though I guess that’s a different sort of boundary violation.) Half the houses in town stand empty, and since they have no furniture of their own and their mother is doing nothing to acquire it, Michael breaks into houses and steals furnishings.

My jaw drops.

Adela goes in the other direction, becoming a conscientious student and social justice advocate. But their mother pays her no attention, either.

For the first half of this story, it seems like a four star novel to me; well written, competent, but nothing to merit great accolades. This changes in the second half, because all three of these characters are dynamic, and the changes in them are absolutely believable and deeply absorbing.

I have friends that do social work, and what they have told me is this: children that are forced to become the adults in the family, taking on responsibilities they’re too young for when a parent abdicates them, often appear to miraculously mature, competent beyond their years. Everything is organized. They may do the jobs as well as any adult, and sometimes better than most. How wonderful!

But because they aren’t developmentally ready for these things yet, what happens is that later, when they are grown, they fall apart and become breathtakingly immature, because they have to go back and live their adolescent years that were stolen from them. (As a teacher, I saw this in action a couple of times.) And so I am awestruck by how consistently our Grattan’s characters follow this pattern.

As the second half progresses, I make a couple of predictions, one of which is sort of formulaic, but Grattan does other things, and they’re far better than what I’d guessed. We follow these characters for several decades, and at the end, we see the relationship that blooms between Beate and her grandson. When it’s over, I miss them.

Because Michael is gay and is one of our three protagonists, this novel is easily slotted into the LGTB genre, but it is much more than this. Instead, one should regard it as a well-written story in which one character is gay.
But whatever you choose to call this book, you should get it and read it if you love excellent fiction.

It took me quite a while to finish this one, but I am glad I took time to enjoy it. It almost felt like more than one book, as you had the flashes to Beate's childhood, as well as the progression through her children's lives.

I honestly don't know much about Germany from the fall of the Berlin wall. I feel like most books I read that take place in Germany are current day or from WWII. It was interesting and worthwhile to get that glimpse into a different time period, and I'm curious to read other accounts from the same time.

This also gave me a lot of emotions around the dynamics we have within families ... with parents, siblings, cousins, and then the relationship with our partners and their families.

4.5 stars, and one of the most emotionally satisfying reading experiences I've had in the past year. Now I feel terribly guilty about letting this one languish in the depths of my Kindle for six months, and it was only reviews by Lark and Jennifer (and Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker) that inspired me to start reading. If you've enjoyed Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain or Philip Hensher's work, you'll enjoy this finely-observed gay coming-of-age novel.

This is a small, intimate family story with a fractured time-frame, but the non-consecutive chapters, which jump from the points of view of four major characters across fifty years, illuminate parallels in personality and character. Grattan writes with great empathy and insight about the personal experience of dislocation between Germany and America.

But intriguingly, this is about an East German-born woman returning to the former DDR and her American-born adolescent children building a new life there in the early 1990s, right after the awkward experience of reunification. Ironically, Beate and her son Michael become more fully themselves-- and more fully at home-- after leaving upstate New York for the fictional Baltic coastal town of Kritzhagen,

First, the backstory: in 1968, Beate is a 12-year-old schoolgirl whose parents escape to the West on a train with forged passports. Her sanctimonious philosophy professor father never feels comfortable in Cologne, and the family ends up in a permanently awkward state of exile in a Minnesota college town, never adapting to life in English. Beate longs for an escape, and as a college student meets Paul, the sister of a friend, and the two of them enter a passionate and destructive relationship that snowballs into a failed marriage with two children.

The main action begins: In 1990, after Paul abandons the family, Beate impulsively moves back to Kritzhagen, where ownership of her family's house has been restored to her. Sinking into a deep depression, she all but abandons her adolescent children Adela and Michael, who are close enough in age and psychologically co-dependent enough to be twins, to raise themselves. The move becomes a path of liberation for Michael, who fully embraces his sexuality in a way that was impossible in the more homophobic States, and a rabbit hole for the bookish Adela, who becomes obsessed with Nazi-era history.

We follow these three, and Adela's son Peter, over the next 25 years, with a tight focus on the family house itself. While this is not a plot-driven story (there are a few longueurs and poorly-paced episodes), Grattan writes wonderfully detailed and nuanced characters. Michael and Adela are fluent in German, and they aren't perceived as foreign, unlike the Balkan refugees who settle in an informal camp in an abandond lot. And Kritzhagen itself becomes another character, as it develops from an Ossi backwater into a prosperous beach resort.

Grattan addresses the underlying history but keeps his focus on the characters: Beate unknowingly hangs out in a bar with former Stasi agents, neo-Nazis violently raid the migrant camp, Michael opens an Ostalgie-themed bar called Secret Police. Perhaps the only real flaw is the characterization of their cousin Udo, a kind and saintly puppy-dog who inexplicably plunges into an act of violence that pulls Michael and Adela apart for many years.

I won't spoil the rest for you, but this was such a pleasant surprise.

Many thanks to MCD and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in return for an honest and unbiased review.

In this novel, we follow a family that is splintered, broken, and hanging on by a thread as the newly divorced mother Beate, brings her children Michael and Adela to former East Germany from the US when she is told she has inherited the family home. She escaped as a child with her professor father and mother when she was little.

Upon returning, she finds the town broken, the home empty and the situation worse than she could have imagined. She remembers no one and drinks herself into a sleep all through the day, leaving the kids 13 and 12 to fend for themselves. The kids stumble in this cold, fairly lawless, and crippled area, relying on a mysterious cousin to learn the ways to navigate the new normal.

The story bounces in time between the escape Beate made in the late 60s, to the late 70s and her return, to the present day.

While I find the time frames fascinating, this was decidedly not a book for me. There was little joy, little beauty to be found. He writes the dynamics in families very well, but I never cared for a single character in the story. Just as I would start to like them, some stupid decision they would make would pull me out. There is a significant bleak undertone to the book and it's just not my type of story.

This novel takes place in Germany, beginning in 1965 then spending most in the 90s. I was enthralled in the character development. However, the plot left much to be desired and came off sporadic and directionless.