Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure - these are things that happen in the Glass Room. High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the ...
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Cool. Balanced. Modern. The precisions of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession and the fear of failure - these are things that happen in the Glass Room. High on a Czechoslovak hill, the Landauer House shines as a wonder of steel and glass and onyx built specially for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer, a Jew married to a gentile. But the radiant honesty of 1930 that the house, with its unique Glass Room, seems to engender quickly tarnishes as the storm clouds of WW2 gather, and eventually the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, and as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian, both the best and the worst of the history of Eastern Europe becomes somehow embodied and perhaps emboldened within the beautiful and austere surfaces and planes so carefully designed, until events become full-circle.
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Simon Mawer's "The Glass Room" (2009) is a lengthy historical novel set largely in Czechoslovakia. The novel begins in the years prior to WW II and proceeds through the war years. It then covers the Soviet occupation and, briefly, the Velvet Revolution.
This large historical sweep does not cover the full scope of the novel. Mawer tells the story of a wealthy family, the Landauers, beginning with the arranged marriage of Viktor, a wealthy automobile manufacturer and a secular Jew, to Liesel, the daughter of Landauer's business partner. At the beginning of their marriage, the Landauers contract with a brilliant young architect, Rainer von Abt, to build a large modernistic home on an elevation in a city called Mesto. The house is spare and lean and features the extensive use of glass, open spaces, lack of ornament, and an expensive onyx inner wall. The Laundauers are to be free to live their lives as they see fit, without constraints of the past. At the outset of the book, Mawer explains that the architect, von Abt, the house, and the city are based on actual people and places. But the reader does not require background in the histories to understand the story. The major characters in the book, other than von Abt, are fictitious.
The book opens at the end of the story, giving the reader an overview of what has happened. An aged Liesel returns to the Landauer House after an absence of 30 years to reflect on her eventful life and on her family. Following the introductory chapter, the story is told chronologically through many chapters. The chapters are each short which helps with the readibility of the book and the narrative flow.
Historical events, such as the appeasement of Hitler over Czechslovakia and the subsequent War and Holocaust are juxtaposed against the story of the Landauers and their modernist home. The family is educated and its life is filled with music as exemplified by the Bosendorfer grand piano in the onyx room. The piano music of Czech composer Leos Janackek Jan�¡cek: Piano Works (Complete) (which I have recently had occasion to hear) and Ravel's imaginative piano movement "Odine", which tells the mythical story of a water-sprite, play large roles in the book. The Landauers have two children, a girl Ottilie, and a boy, Martin, the latter the product of a difficult birth. The marriage between Viktor and Leisel begins to suffer from a lack of passion. On his business trips, Viktor gradually becomes attached to a part-time prostitute, Kata. Liesel becomes sexually attracted to her best friend Hana, who is also married to a Jewish man and who engages in a wide range of infidelities. Because Viktor is Jewish, the family is forced to flee near midway in the novel and the Nazis steal their home. At that point, the scenes of the book shift between the Landauers and their exile and their friends and modernistic home and their fates.
Much of this book as wonderfully written and developed as Mawer builds tension and successfully integrates the story of the lives of his characters with large historical events. As the book proceeds, it comes dangerously close to collapse. The portrayal of life under the pressures of WW II seems to lose its focus. Too much of the story turns upon coincidence. As the work develops, the sexual infidelities, repressions, and experimentations of most of the characters come increasingly to the forefront. Sexuality is important in understanding character and events. In this book, sexuality becomes imposed in from the outside, so to speak. It gradually becomes unconvincing. The characters' sexual activities and orientations seem to be discussed more for their own sake than as part of an integral portrayal of their lives. In addition, as the book moves along in time its focus starts to wander. The chapters become shorter and the characters less fully described. Late in the book, during the time of Soviet occupation, Mawer introduces a largely new set of characters and stories only lightly tied to the Landauers and their modernistic home. The cohesion of the book is tested.
The book tells a poignant story of the War and a lost earlier world. Although it does not bear the symbolic weight that Mawer puts on it, the Landauer house suggest that the modernist project of understanding and living in the present itself becomes a moment in history. The large themes in the book are not fully realized or tied together. "The Glass Room" still is a novel of history, ideas, and character that for the most part worked for me and held my attention.
Robin Friedman
Cordelia
Feb 5, 2010
A Space in Time
Do not oick up this book unless you are prepared to put aside all calls for help and all required duties. Once you start reading you will be pulled into a world of apprehension, which begins in 1929 when the Bauhaus structure is planned and built by a Jewish family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Your antennae will be immediately alerted to the rise of Nazism with its attendant consequences for the Landauer family. Characterization includes the house as well as the family, as the house is always sensitive to its use and its occupants. A broad picture of wartime is delineated. but the focus always narrows to the plight of the house.
