Review: The Electrician and the Seamstress

Monica Granlove, The Electrician and the Seamstress (Kindle 2024)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214349085-the-electrician-and-the-seamstress?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=3jB7tX14xI&rank=1

Nazi-era Romeo-and-Juliet family saga

1959 Frankfurt. Karla and Bruno are being interviewed about their lives by a history professor at Goethe University. They had travelled nine hours from their home in Kiel. Germany was now divided, East and West, and the whole country, not only the Arnolds, was in recovery from the traumas of two wars.
Karla’s story begins in 1928, her mother’s funeral during the depths of winter. Her father slipping into incompetence, the burden of the household falls upon Karla. Her parents had tried to shield the children from any news about the war. Karla had devoted her energies to the piano; now her dreams of going to university are shattered. Her father and sister support the National Socialists. Her father wants her to marry the Nazi dentist mayor Drechsler. Instead he befriends her sister Erna.

Bruno and his brother Karl work on the ships that Karla’s father designed. He meets Karla as they together rescue a kitten from under a truck. He is a great storyteller. His Jewish friends Eli and Ilse are particularly affected by the political situation. People are being taken to ‘re-education camps’. Bruno and Karla marry amid a sea of black uniforms and swastika armbands, and they try to save Eli and Ilse and protect their own children from the escalating persecution. Bruno is drafted into Hitler’s infantry and makes an arduous escape. Karla is roped into service, too.
This Nazi-era family saga is personal and heartfelt and at the same time well-researched. We discover in the Epilogue that it was based on the true story of Granlove’s grandparents. How wonderful that they had an author granddaughter to record their remarkable story for posterity.
At about the ¾ mark, we lose Karla’s POV for many chapters, serving to accentuate Bruno’s painful separation from his family, which so many people experienced during this war. The story of the whole neighbourhood listening to Karla’s piano playing the evening before they evacuated from Kiel is so moving. As is Bruno’s panic attack while queuing for the toilet.
I could have done without the introduction on WWI and how it affected the media. We already knew that.