The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The critics have loved this book – and so do I. Its appeal for me was immediate: it’s about a period in history that I find most fascinating, between the two world wars. It’s set in Czechoslovakia and Vienna, with references to the artists working at that time. And it is about the history of a house designed by an architect who worked with van der Rohe and Loos, architects I learned to admire during our time in Europe. The wealthy Landauer family employ the architect to build them a house and he creates a humdinger of a place, hanging off the hillside, with a vast plate glass fronted room that becomes a centre for art and culture in the city. The novel follows the lives of the people associated with the house - Liesel, Ottilie, Martin, Kata, Marika and Viktor and their friends Hana and Oskar - as the war progresses through first the Nazis, then the Soviets, then socialism and Dubcek. It’s sparsely written and avoids excessive imagery and embellishment, so although there’s a lot of sex and emotion, it doesn’t get out of hand and collapse into the type of sensational nonsense that a lot of historical novels do. My only criticism is that I found a couple of the sub plots unnecessary and a bit irritating and the ending a bit sentimental, almost as if he had to tie everything up neatly, which isn’t actually what happens in reality. There’s a great device at the beginning of the last chapter that really cheered me up – it’s not often you see some sort of literary trick that really ought to be but the beginning of the last chapter is just so satisfying. 4 ½ stars for this one.