The Aftermath

In the aftermath of WWII, Colonel Lewis Morgan is stationed in Hamburg, Germany with his family, and charged with the rebuilding of the city and the denazification of its citizens. When presented with a requisitioned mansion on the banks of the River Elbe, Colonel Morgan allows the current occupants, a German architect and his unruly daughter, to continue to live in the house alongside his own wife and son. But the charged atmosphere of both the city and the house slowly tears apart the lives of the occupants and they find themselves on strange and unknown paths.

Brook builds a great ambiance of frustrated melancholy and loss that sets the tone perfectly for the entirety of the book. The pacing was a bit slower than I normally care for, but at the same time, the story seemed to unfold smoothly. There’s no true climax and events unfold in an unhurried Sunday-afternoon pace, but overall, it was a solid, if non-energizing, read.