I have found Gail Jones to be a precise and heartfelt writer. Her last novel, the uniquely Sydney novel, Five Bells, was a joyous celebration of the city and its people. A Guide To Berlin is another unique exploration of one of the most mysterious and spellbinding cities of the world.
Cass is an Australian in Berlin. By chance, when capturing one of celebrated writer Nabokov’s residences in Berlin, she meets Marco. He invites her along to meet like minded people. The group, from Japan, Italy and America float across empty apartments and spend time sharing their darkest and lightest memories.
Conversation turned to politics. It was a refined to consider social meanings, to acknowledge real urgencies and those not their own. Gino was still upset, he said, by the mass drowning of African refugees, a few months back, off the island of Lampedusa. Cass knew the figure: 366 lives lost and not one child under twelve who’d survived.
The speak-memories provide a deeply passionate look into the backgrounds of each person. As the Berlin winter turns everything white, then grey and finally black, each has been drawn to Berlin for different reasons. The visions of Berlin from each show the city for all its layers of death, creation and humanity. As a City, Berlin begins to embody each of them. More than any city there has been more inhumanity born in Berlin than any other. Yet, as seen with the groups love of Nabokov, there has been much created here that reflects the greatest of humanity.
‘We are all shits, my friends. We are all literary snobs in this vicarious little room of our own, dilettantish, smug, hidden from the fucked-up world. We are enslaved to the folly and the whirlpool of our own obsessions.’
Class is a most interesting figure. In her mid 20s, she has escaped from Australia, found herself in London and now Berlin. A passionate, observational figure who notices things in the group, in the city and in herself that no one else sees. Her observation of the others and the city are painful and heartfelt. The city is alive, the layers of war, creation, often connected to the train system and the markers of history.
Berlin in winter is an unforgiving place. It has been a place of known violence and of the greatest of humanity. In the group we see the same. As they separate, with the echoes of violence in their ears, having had their memories scarred, Cass turns her head away from city.
Troy Martin 