This book offers a thought-provoking exploration of World War II through the eyes of the long-time residents of an apartment building in Belgium. It begins before the war, capturing the growing menace of Naziism and the looming threat of invasion. The narrative delves into the hardships of rationing and loss, as well as the courageous acts—both small and significant—that individuals undertake in resistance. The diverse viewpoints provide a rich tapestry of life, from children growing up within a close-knit community of neighbors to adults engaged in discussions about philosophy, design, art, and the essence of beauty. The story reveals that not everything is black and white; there are countless shades of gray. I thoroughly enjoyed the different perspectives and the exploration of family and love in such a complex context.

Reminiscent of *The Diary of Anne Frank*, *33 Place Brugman* recounts the lives of families residing in an apartment building before and during the German occupation. It vividly portrays their daily struggles for survival amid the harsh realities of war. The narrative brings to light the resilience and determination of those facing the relentless challenges of their times, offering a poignant look at their endurance and courage.

Easy read and loving characters though the storylines were sometimes hard to follow

This was a thought provoking premise to view and experience WWII through the POV of the long time residents of an apartment building in Belgium. Starting pre-war with the signs of the spread of Naziism in neighboring countries and the possible invasion, the difficulties of navigating the rations and losses, and to those who chose to do small but important things to fight back, while some gave all. The different viewpoints offer a glimpse of life with children who grew up with an extended family of neighbors, to now being of age to decide their futures, to the adults that discuss philosophies, design, and color, art and beauty, and the importance of recognizing and preserving them. Not all is color, as there are infinite shades of gray. Very much enjoyed the POV of the different residents and redefining what is family and love.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC edition. A couple of glitches with the kindle version (page and paragraph breaks)

I had a bit of a tough time getting through this one. I can imagine that it's a bit tough to convey things in a historical fiction genre. As the author, you have probably immersed yourself in research and if you forget that the audience might need more guidance to make connections, you can easily lose them. I am of that group. I felt like there was a lot I was supposed to infer, as if I were reading something in code and me without my secret squirrel decoder ring at the ready. That's a lot of words for I just feel I missed so much on this and it made me frustrated.

Austen expertly manages a diverse cast of characters, each with their own distinct viewpoints and motivations. The story is skillfully crafted, leading you to the final destination with precision.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the ARC.

While Historic Fiction. Is my genre of choice, 33 Place Brugmann, was a challenge for me. The story is set In an apartment building at the address of the title in. Belgium. Each chapter is about one of the residents in the building during the beginning of the Nazi invasion, each with a different perspective.
I find the concept a good one, it just didn’t work for me. I read this book just in case I could catch something that I missed the first time.
Thank you for the chance to read and review this book

In a society where narcissism is commonplace with war and video games such as Grand Theft Auto are glamorized, it's a shock to the system to read a touch of reality. Today, it is hard to imagine the hardships hatred causes people to endure, 33 PLACE BRUGMAN manages to give us a glimpse.
Reminiscent of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, 33 PLACE  BRUGMAN tells the story of the families living in an apartment building before and during the German occupation. It tells of the struggles people endure just to survive another day. Along the way, some people will disappear as others are killed. Most will starve, as some take advantage making a profit. People you think will help do not, as those you think will not help you. It tells of people in an impossible situation, doing what they can to help, as they themselves just try to pull through another day. In the end, they realize the reason they fight back to stay alive.

Wow, a stunning debut.

what a tangled web we weave. Austen managed to incorporate a staggering cast of characters with their uniques perspectives and priorities. She cast a wide circle and by the end you were precisely where she wanted you.

I have questions and wish I knew more about where everyone ended up, but I can draw my own conclusions. Incredibly strong and detailed imagery, bordering on whimsy at times.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic for the ARC.

Thought this seemed like an interesting historical fiction book about Belgium in WW II. Unfortunately, I found it extremely difficult to follow - the story follows residents in an apartment complex in Brussels during the war. The story switches viewpoints (telling you whose story you are now in) - honestly, interesting idea but I found the execution disorienting and tough to follow.

33 Place Brugman follows the residents of a Beaux Arts building in Brussels at the onset of the Nazi invasion. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different resident. It’’s a story of community, identity and complexity that paints a robust picture of the human experience during WWII. I highly recommend this book for those who typically enjoy historical fiction.

Hmmmm, this book was interesting to say the least. It starts choppy and slow but does pick up about halfway through.

Usually I enjoy when each chapter is told in a different POV, this time, by a different resident living in the building. For me, this time it was confusing. There is lots going on and it was hard to stay with it. I almost gave up a few times.

It's a story that feels real and takes us into the turmoil, fear and mess when times are chaotic and so scary. I don't regret reading it but I do wish I enjoyed it more and was not so confused.

You know what I always say ....read it for yourself, you may love it!

Look for 33 Brugmann Place in March 2025.

Thank you to Grove Press and Netgalley for providing the book. This is my voluntary, honest review.

This is not my usual story that I read. I’d say historical fiction, which is a first for me. It’s an interesting story, definitely something I’d recommend.

I'm 20% in and have no idea what's going on. DNF. I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for my digital copy. I really enjoyed the story. I’m not a fan of historic fantasy but this book felt like a warm hug. The plot is taking place during the WWII and it follows the life of the residents of 33 place Brugman. There are many beautiful moments and some sad ones as betrayal and lies between the characters. I totally recommend this to everyone, it’s a very fast paced story.

Can’t wait to see the book published.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this advanced copy. The historical fiction story surrounds residents at 33 Place Brugmann during WWII. You get a glimpse of each person’s life before and after the Nazi invasion. Each with hope, betrayal, loss, survival and suffering. It makes you feel like you are also living in this building listening to conversations around you but being careful of what you say as everyone can hear. Can’t wait to see this book on the shelves in bookstores in March 2025.

Thank you, Grove Atlantic Press and NetGalley, for the advance copy of this book.

Alice Austen has woven a convincing tale of what it was like to live in an apartment building in Belgium during World War II.

Everyone was vulnerable to other people’s possible fabrications. The most trivial knowledge about an acquaintance when shared with the Nazis could result in imprisonment, death by torture or removal to a concentration camp.

Some of the Nazi officers were compassionate as they held Jewish lives in the balance. This type of officer gave hope to some of the citizens, sustaining the wives of missing men enough for the women to carry on with the hope that they would live to give birth to their unborn children.

A compelling story.

Engaging and immersive. A recommended first purchase for collections where historical fiction is popular.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press and NetGalley for an advance copy of 33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen.

The setting is an apartment building in Brussels, Belgium during the German occupation of the country. It follows the occupants of the eight apartments and the maid's quarters on the fifth floor. On the ground floor are the Everards, a notary, his wife and their two children who own the building. In apartment 2L is Mr. Ivo Van Cauter, a city official who moves in following the death of widow Boudrot in 1939. Across the hall is the DeBaerres, Martin, and attorney, his wife Katrin, a housewife and their adult son, Dirk, who is a student. Martin and Katrin both die, leaving Dirk to occupy the apartment alone. The third floor apartments are occupied by Colonel Herman Warlemont, a former member of the Belgian Armed Forces and a widower in 3L and Agathe Hobert, former cafe' proprietor in 3R. On the fourth floor in 4L are the Sauvins, widower architect Franois and his daughter, Charlotte, who he has raised alone after her mother died in childbirth and the Raphaels, fine art dealer Leo, wife Sophia and daughter Esther, and son Julian a student at Cambridge. The tenants are rounded out by Masha Balyayeva a refugee seamstress.

The story starts just before the German occupation with Masha and the Raphaels, all Jews, leaving Belgium ahead of the threat of the German's arrival. Masha goes to France with her lover Harry, who is a part of the resistance. The Raphaels end up in Scotland, with the exception of Julian who joins the RAF. It isn't until the Raphaels have left that Charlotte realizes that her feelings for Julian may have been more than just friends who had grown up together.

Charlotte instead marries Phillipe, a fellow student at university of Jewish descent, who also leaves ahead of the German occupation to join the RAF. Charlotte remains with her father who spends his days sketching and brewing beer that he shares with their downstairs neighbor, Colonel Warlemont.

Colonel Warlemont lives alone with his dog, Zipper, until he starts to take in misplaced deaf/mute individuals who generally stay for a few days before moving on to some place else. This is much to the annoyance of his neighbor across the hall, Agathe Hobart.

Agathe Hobart is the busybody of the building. Frequently spying on her neighbors comings and goings. She has distrust for everyone, but establishes an unexpected connection with Dirk, who is not a particularly likeable character in the beginning of the story.

Dirk does develop throughout the story, befriending Agathe, though be it for personal reasons to be able to borrow her car. However, what he does while borrowing her car brings a whole new depth to Dirk that we don't realize until very close to the end of the story.

Dirk's neighbor across the hall, Ivo Van Cauter is not only a city official, but also a Nazi sympathizer. His actions as such, puts him in a position to put most of his neighbors more ill at ease. It's his demands on Mr. Everard that almost brings down Colonel Warlemont and results in Francois Sauvin being detained by the Nazi's.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of the various characters, interweaving their stories in a way that depicts the level of distrust amongst neighbors during a time when no one is safe from scrutiny by the Nazis. From writing notes to each other while they are in the same apartment and burning them afterward to being watchful of each other and the interest the others are showing in themselves.

As a fan of historical fiction, I found the story line to be intuitive in the lives of those living in countries under German occupation. The difficulties just to survive on substandard rationing and having to be constantly vigilant of everything around you must have been exhausting. It makes it all so much clearer something my grandmother told us when she was alive. Having come to the United States in 1916 from Norway she escaped the German occupation of her home country. Her brother who stayed in Norway did tell her that during WWII the walls had ears and you had to be careful of what you said.

If you are looking for a story that depicts how the residents of occupied countries survived during WWII survived, I highly recommend 33 Place Brugmann.

There are some genuinely engrossing and even riveting moments, both small and large, in Alice Austen’s “33 Place Brugmann,” which individualizes the Nazi occupation of Brussels through the lives of the occupants of the street address of the title.
A particularly compelling small incident for me, for instance, comes when a color-blind girl ends up in trouble at school after a boy who hadn't known of her condition swaps her pencils, which had been labeled to accommodate her condition, and she ends up drawing something in a color other than what the teacher had requested, prompting the teacher to punish her for her “impertinence.” A small incident, as I say, in the context of the novel’s larger historical concern, but compelling for me nevertheless.
More in the novel’s larger sweep is the moment when a woman who’s been working as a spy is wounded by the Gestapo as she tries to help a downed RAF flier and she thinks she has reached safety only to have the situation turn on her in a distinctly unforeseen way. Or there’s the time when another flier who has been shot down makes his way to some farmers who vote on whether to help him or kill him.
Not just compelling in its story lines, though, the novel is also vivid in its descriptiveness, with a particularly dramatic instance coming when a female occupant of the house helps out at a clinic where she tends to soldiers with their “pocked, seared, torn flesh, bits and pieces of limbs missing.” Also particularly arresting for me was the depiction of another house occupant, “the Colonel,” who recalls how he “lost his youth to the Congo,” where he took in “unspeakable sights” such as baskets of cut-off hands, hands that in the Congo’s damp didn't dry out, but rotted and smelled. Reminiscent his account was for me, with how it both perplexed and horrified me, of how I was similarly bewildered and fascinated as a college freshman coming for the first time upon Hemingway’s “On the Quai at Smyrna.”
Riveting, though, as such moments in the novel were for me -- the pages fairly flew by for me in those moments – the novel’s overall effect was diminished somewhat for me by its conceit of the house serving as a framing device for the various stories of its inhabitants. But that nit on my part may have less to do with anything really problematic with the device than simply my strong personal preference for single-narrator presentation. Also, and again this may simply be an indication of my own personal preferences, I found the novel in spots waxing a bit too literary, particularly with its numerous references to Wittgenstein which no doubt amplified the novel’s concerns but left me somewhat cool, even with my having been a philosophy minor.
All in all, though, an estimable read, Austen’s novel, and to my mind particularly relevant in these increasingly scary times of ours in America where I felt that I couldn’t have been the only one to find in the veritable rapture I was seeing at the RNC convention parallels to the Nazi rallies of the ‘30s. And indeed no less an authoritarianism expert than Ruth Ben-Ghiat also expressed concern over the convention, though along with her concern she sounded a cautiously optimistic message if America would only heed it: “You know what to do, Americans. We can avoid this nightmare. Never become resigned or fatalistic. That’s what they want.”

I have had to ruminate for a day before writing this review. I found the book to be confusing at times, as to whom was speaking. In light of that, the book is written, so the reader gets a visceral feeling. The thoughts of the characters are brought to life. Their plight, their understanding of the world with the Nazi invasion and how desperately their lives have been altered. It’s a cleverly thought out plot focusing on the differences of the people housed in one particular apartment building. Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for granting this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own. #NetGalley, #GroveAtlantic.

What a marvelous book whose time and story remind us of the past and possibly the future. A story of love, betrayal, trust, and belief. The device of different voices telling different parts of the story was quite effective, the characters personalities shone I this title. Well worth the time to read.