The Dark Room

The Dark Room is a careful study of three Germans affected by the Second World War: Helmut the young photographer with the deformed arm; Lore the 12-year-old who manages to get her refugee siblings to Hamburg in 1945; and Micha the young teacher who pursues the truth about his grandfather's war years 50 years later. Micha is the most instructive in getting to the core of this book:

I think they should read about the people who did it, too. The real, everyday people, you know. Not just Hitler and Eichmann and whoever. All the underlings, I mean. The students should learn about their lives, the ones who really did the killing.

Helmut is unable to join up because of his weak arm--his parents become ashamed of him in Nazi Germany. Yet by taking part in the last-ditch stand against the Russian invasion of Berlin in 1945 he is at last happy. His story, represented through his tiny photographer's lens, is indicative of his own narrow vision. Seiffert widens her view with Lore, and her encounter with Thomas, a young man who has blue-smudged numbers up his arm and (false) documents saying he is Jewish. As a well-off 12-year-old, whose father was in the Nazi Party, Lore too is at first oblivious to the effects of the war on others. She tries to believe that the pictures the Allies pin up of the Jews in the camps--whether alive or dead--are American actors. Micha's story, raking over the past and with the advantage of hindsight, well-documented history and the public German admission of guilt, feels the most raw and truthful. Seiffert writes delicately and plainly, making clear that it is not just the Jewish or Nazi experience of the Second World War which is valid, but that a whole country was involved, and is still affected by it. The Dark Room reminds us again that every person's experience is unique, and every person's heritage (whether German, Byelorussian, American or Jewish, Christian or atheist) will always be unique to them. --Olivia Dickinson

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Poignant stories and beautifully written, but something was missing - Rated
I wasn't convinced about the balance between the stories. The first was a short story, the second was much longer and the third was virtually a novel in it's own right. They were, however, beautifully written and chose angles on the holocaust which are not usually tackled.
This author has an interesting way of presenting dialogue. In the first story it was almost non-existant and in the others it was written without explaing who was speaking. A style which worked well and was very gripping.
It was interesting to see the Second World War from the point of view of Germans as innocent victims. In all 3 stories, the plots handle the unimaginable horror which swept Germany when it became known what had really happened and explore the effects on the families of those involved.
My main criticism is that there seemed to be something missing with the link between the stories and I was expecting characters to run through all the stories. This would have made the book feel more like a novel than seperate stories.

Quite boring style of writing - Rated
I am currently reading this book and it is quite a bore. The style of writing is so mundane. I will plod on til the end.

Incomplete, disappointing - Rated
In my opinion `The Dark Room' was incomplete and disappointing because it was written as three separate stories. The common link is that they are all set in Germany and are stories about three Germans and the effect that the devastation caused by the Nazis in World War II has on their lives.
They read more like short stories; the first is only 63 pages and is about a young man Helmut. Born in Berlin in 1921 by the time war arrives he is working as a photographer and not fit enough for war service he records the traumas of Berlin during this period with his camera.
The second story, the one I enjoyed most, is 150 pages and set in allied occupied Germany in 1945. It is about a twelve year old girl Hannelore who after the arrest of her Nazi parents leads her younger siblings to safety. I would have liked to see this particular story expanded in to a complete novel or maybe linked with the first one about Helmut.
Finally the story of Micha set in Germany in the late 1990's, the longest story at 170 pages but the one I liked least. Micha is a young man who has become obsessed with the past of his family and country. He has developed a strong desire to know if his beloved grandfather was guilty of committing any atrocities during the War. Again, I would have preferred to read this as a separate novel?
Although I understand the authors theme within the stories and like the link the title gives to the stories I did not find it a particularly rewarding read overall. I definitely feel I would have enjoyed this more than I did had there been some sort of connection with the protagonists.

A Dark Time - Rated
This is an unusual and unsettling book. Its subject is civilian experience during the second world war - so far, so ordinary. But its focus is the experience of Germans - Germans caught up in Naziism.
The novel is comprised of three separate novellas following three different German individuals. The first is about Helmut, a young man born with a disability that causes abnormality of one arm. Helmut would have liked to fight for his country but was turned down. Instead, he starts working in a photography shop and photography becomes his passion. He pours all his energy and his into his pursuit. At the end, the inferiority complex that has plagued him is channelled into the strength that inadequate people derive from power.
The second story is about Lore, a twelve year-old girl who has four siblings. Her father is fighting for the Nazis and the rest of the family hide out in a shed near a farm. But soon the Americans come for her mother, and Lore has to lead her siblings to safety at her grandmother's house across the country. She meets a fellow traveller and her feelings for him are complex.
The third story is about Micha, a young teacher living in contemporary Germany at the end of the twentieth century. His memories of his dead grandfather are of a loving, warm man who adored him. But he needs to find out what his grandfather did during the war. This need becomes a compulsion and obsession that drives his Turkish wife to distraction.

Seiffert writes starkly and simply with sparse, almost naked prose. The starkness outlines the deeds described - no flowery language is required. The read is uncomfortable, but then war is not a pretty subject. As an attempted insight into the minds of those living during the atrocities of WW2, it goes some way to explaining the way non-Jewish German civilians floated through events, not protesting, keeping their heads down. But I don't feel Seiffert goes far enough. None of the characters in the first two stories - the ones actually living during the war - show any awareness of what is happening while it is happening. Lore is shown to see pictures of the corpses of annihilated Jews once the concentration camps have been liberated, and she - like the others around her - supposedly had no knowledge of what had gone on. But to me, this is a cop out. Most Germans will have been aware of the barbarous anti-Semitic crimes committed against the Jews before they were taken away to the concentration camps. There must have been widespread suspicion of their fate or probable fate - yet this is not tackled in the book. More could have been written of what Helmut and his parents and acquaintances felt, and of Lore's mother's views. In this respect, the spare prose is too sparse with the truth. Micha, the protagonist of the last story set in 1998, is the only one who examines the horrors of the Nazi actions, and his angst and revulsion is palpable.
Shortlisted for The Booker in 2001, this book covers the other side of history - the side that is never discussed. It is a brave and strong attempt to dissect the inexplicable and explain the dark side of human nature.

Deep, dark and moving - Rated
Wow what a book. Written in a strange almost shorthand way with a style all her own this is simply brilliant. It helps if you are fascinated by WW2, which I am, but the darkly disturbing storylines of the three stories, though never actually connecting, do weave a deeply moving account of the war and the atrocities witnessed by German citizens. I agree with other reviewers that the last story is the most profound and had me in tears. Wonderful stuff!