Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck

This is a strange almost ghostly story about place. A landscape, earth and water, is formed over millennia. And then a house is built on the shores of the lake. As the politics of the German twentieth century unfold, the house changes hands. The Jewish family are forced to sell, for half the market value, to the German architect who works with Speers on the Germania project. He renovates the house with love. At the end of the war, it is occupied by the Russians. Under the GDR, the architect must also flee because he has done business with the west and faces imprisonment. Returning exiles from Siberia claim the place. There is a court case over illegal possession. And they then sell the house. Through all of this the character of the gardener appears, going through is routine of lovingly managing the grounds and the boatshed and the woodshed, opening and closing the house as summer moves in to winter, dismantling and re-erecting the wharf for the summer season. There is a sort of poetic movement about all this, and of course that’s reflected in the lovely language. Erpenbeck tells the story of the house as a detached observer, describing the thoughts of her characters but never allowing them anything other than an internal life, as it were. What is horrifying though are the vignettes of utter, despicable violence, the no holds barred cruelty of humankind, which are all the more searing because of the tranquility of the setting. This is an old book, published in 2008 I think, but a classic.