A Guide to Berlin

Author: Gail JonesPublisher: Random House BooksRating: ★★★★

 By JORDANA DE VALLE

 “What nobody tells you is that Berlin is haunted in winter, truly haunted.”

Gail Jones’ A Guide to Berlin is as haunting as the bitterly “cruel winter” it describes. Interlaced with secrets and the foreshadowing of death and violence, this deeply human journey is unsettling from the first page.

The novel, which is named after Vladimir Nabokov’s 1925 short story A Guide to Berlin, follows Cass, a 26-year-old Australian who finds herself in Berlin during the coldest winter in a quarter of a century.

While in Berlin, Cass is invited to join a small community of strangers who are inspired and compelled by their shared interest in Nabokov's literary work. At her first meeting, the six foreigners begin a “speak-memory” game, in which each character introduces themself with a remembered story or detail.

Promising to speak openly and freely, the characters begin to share tender and modest reflections from their pasts: “It was a new kind of community, not academic, not social, but some new species linking words and bodies with an occult sense of the written world.”

The international travellers rapidly form a literary fellowship until a wicked act of violence tears the group apart and throws the story in a shattering new direction.

It’s easy to see how Nabokov’s A Guide to Berlin has influenced not only the title and essence of the novel, but also the unhurried and tender prose. Bursting with elegant descriptions and an intense engagement with place, Jones examines everything in overwhelming detail.

The Nabokovian style of writing makes for a nervous and suffocating read as Jones relentlessly alludes to the impending doom: “The white sky was menacing. The plates of ice on the Spree, uneven and jagged, resembled a spray of shattered glass after a wartime bombing.”

Fortunately, this oppressive feeling is lit up with rare but dreamy moments: “The blue violet of shadows had lightened and there was a radiance splintering across the wall. When she turned she saw it: the first snowfall since she had arrived.”

Through this ornate language, Jones also provides a probing and intimate look into the “deeply intoxicating” pasts of her characters. From the quirky young Japanese couple to the lovely 60-year-old literature scholar,  each individual is profoundly complex and essentially messed up.

Cass is no exception. Obsessed by her whirlpool of damaged memories, she is unable to live in the present and her journey seems to lack purpose, swirling and hindered by the past. A seemingly passive personality, she evokes pity as she innocently endeavours to find consolation among strangers.

As all the characters attempt to navigate their way through the present, Jones artfully explores the risks of accelerated intimacy and the ever-elusive nature of humans.

Towards the shattering conclusion of this contemporary novel you can’t help but feel betrayed at how quickly truth and friendship turn to lies: “The most earnest and open story still meant nothing assured. This was the surprise of other people: their wealth of remorseless secrets. And this is what she had learnt: the failure of any tale.”

Penetrating and compelling, this layered novel has a troubling aura that leaves you with a “heavy heart and a racing mind”.