A fascinating novel exploring the complex issues that can arise when US descendants of German residents of East Germany who, in the 1950s were uprooted and had to relocate to West Germany, decide to make a claim for the property of their ancestors stolen or purchased for a song. Told from granddaughter Kate’s perspective as the German Reunification process opens up in the 1990s, it is also a story of her conflicted relationship with her brother Martin. Nicely written and structured. Thank you to thew author, publisher and NetGalley for a digital ARC.

This novel is set in the States but its subject matter is the German Reunification in 1990 and it explores how the political interconnects with the deeply personal. The story is told from Kate’s perspective, who hadn’t seen her brother Martin for 15 years due to a fall out directly linked to the events in Germany at the time of reunification.

Kate and Martin grew up in Illinois with a German mother whose family uprooted and left their house in East Germany for the Bodensee (West Germany) in the 1950s. As children, they visited their grandparents at the Bodensee every Summer and both feel a strong connection to their German roots. When the Wall came down, they decide to find out more about what happened back in the 50s and they go to East Germany to find the house their grandparents left behind and start to piece together their family’s history. With their grandparents long gone, it is their own childhood memories and the recollections of their mum and her sister as well of old family friends and the people now living in their grandparents’ house, that bring to life a very personal story that is representative of so many.

Kate and Martin’s quest for their family’s past finds an abrupt end when Unification law opened the door for those people who fled from the East to re-claim their property and Martin decides to make such a claim. The big questions of identity, belonging, right and wrong that shaped the political agenda at the time of Unification find their reflection in Martin and Kate’s personal struggle with their own heritage.

This book felt authentic and truthful to me – and that goes for the many references regarding German language and culture as well as for its approach to a big historical event and its reflection in individual life stories. Highly recommended.
I am grateful to NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Restitution is one of those deceptively short novels that slips quietly under your skin. Told with restraint and precision, it explores guilt, identity, and what we owe to both history and ourselves.
At its centre are siblings Kate and Martin, American-raised children of a German mother, who return to their family’s old house in East Germany after the Wall falls and begin to unpick the fractured, incomplete story of their past. As ever with this kind of material, it’s what isn’t said that resonates most loudly.
Shapiro’s style is spare but observant. There’s a constant sense of things not quite fitting—slightly off glances, paused conversations, the wrong tone at the wrong time—which works well given the subject matter.  Kate, our narrator is highly attuned to these shifts and silences, and there’s a compelling unease as she begins to reckon with what may have been deliberately omitted or rewritten by those around her. This is less about discovering buried family secrets and more about realising how comfortable we all are with partial truths.
It’s also very good on the oddness of being both inside and outside a culture. The family’s initial return to Germany is charged not just with historical weight but with the kind of cultural dissonance that’s hard to pin down.  This was one of things I responded to most in the book, the intimate look at what it felt like to experience the devastating partition of a nation and the subsequent reunification that was in its own way no less traumatic.
It’s not a showy book, but there are moments of great clarity, and something about the coolness of the prose makes the emotional weight hit harder when it does come. This book captures brilliantly the chaos of family life in crisis—the taut ties that hold people together, and the way in which, when those finally snap, everyone is flung much further apart than you'd expect.
Compelling, with a quiet intensity.

Knowing very little about their mother’s youth in East Germany, years after the Berlin Wall comes down, the girls go to Germany hoping for answers. This is a very good story.

A thought-provoking, bittersweet novel about family secrets, the title Restitution refers to reclaiming property in East Germany. The story is mainly set in the 1990s but also covers the decades from the 50s, until contemporary times. Narrated by Kate, who lives in the US and is proud of her German roots, the story tells of her conflict with her brother Martin. After a series of bereavements, they revisit their grandparents' old house in East Germany and while Kate feels uneasy about disturbing the people who live there, Martin wants to pursue a claim. The story explores how and why their grandparents left, and the impact on her mother.

The simple yet elegant writing style really drew me into the book. The words have been chosen with care, but they feel natural. Although the content was sad and sometimes dark, there was catharsis. I felt that the narrative was too close to a history lecture at times, but at least it was informative and I learned more about East German politics. Multiple voices or flashbacks would have improved the reading experience for me, instead of everything being told to Kate.

I'd recommend this book. It's not my usual kind of read but I particularly liked the writing style and would read more from this author.