The Economist - USA (2021-02-20)

70 Books & arts The Economist February 20th 2021

Foreigners in Berlin

Unreal city

B

erlin ought to collapse under the

weight of its past. Its 20th century was

scarred by revolution, tyranny, genocide

and partition, each remembered in the so-

lemn monuments and museums that dot

the city today. But there has long been a

second Berlin, this one a blank slate and

haven for young Europeans, Americans,

Antipodeans and other free spirits seeking

cheap rent, like-minded souls and perhaps

a second adolescence. This is a metropolis

of edgy galleries, smoky bars, empty

streets and casual liaisons; of perfunctory

efforts to learn German, 30-somethings

serving out internships, and soul-sapping

battles with the paper-pushers of the Aus-

länderbehörde(immigration offices). 

This version of Berlin offers almost un-

limited creative, recreational and sexual

possibilities—albeit usually within a

handful of gentrifying neighbourhoods in

the city’s east—and is the backdrop for two

new books by young Anglophone writers.

Neither “Fake Accounts”, a debut novel by

Lauren Oyler, an American critic who once

lived in Berlin, nor “In the End, It Was All

About Love” by Musa Okwonga, a British

writer and musician who still does, is real-

ly about the German capital. Its tumultu-

ous history barely features in either; nor,

with the odd exception, do its contempo-

rary politics. Instead, Berlin offers the pro-

tagonists the space they need to examine

and discover themselves.

The nameless American narrator of

“Fake Accounts”, the more ambitious of the

two, finds herself in a bind. Snooping

through her boyfriend’s phone, she learns

he has been peddling outlandish conspir-

acy theories to a large following on Insta-

gram. Before she can ditch him, though, he

dies in a bicycle accident. Shocked but also

frustrated, on a whim she indulges what

friends dismiss as the “toolish popular

fantasy” of leaving New York for Berlin,

where “you could come and go from life as

you pleased,” and not be “obligated to act a

certain way, or at all”. 

Alienated and aimless, she takes on

low-wage work to support what becomes

her main recreational activity: inventing

fake personalities to try out on unsuspect-

ing dates arranged online, whom she

meets in bars in Neukölln or Kreuzberg.

Not a lot happens (until, in the final chap-

ter, it does). Social media, especially Twit-

ter, both relieve and intensify her sense of

isolation. The narrative begins to flit be-

tween the virtual and the “real”, teasing out

the ways one interacts with and shapes the

other. Berlin leaves her in peace as she pur-

sues her eccentric projects.

“Fake Accounts” resolves the problem

of how to render the online world in fiction

without falling prey to technobabble or un-

readability. Indeed, it is in part a rebuttal of

the claim that modern technology has

made old-fashioned fiction obsolete—for

while it grapples with the contemporary

challenges of social media, it also dwells

on the traditional concerns of motivation

and character. In long, baggy paragraphs,

the narrator scrutinises her behaviour and

beliefs and invites others to join in, from a

smart-alec chorus of ex-boyfriends to the

reader, whose approval is sought but

whose assumptions are questioned at ev-

ery turn. 

This playful approach, reminiscent of

Fake Accounts.By Lauren Oyler. Catapult;

272 pages; $26. Fourth Estate; £12.99

In the End, It Was All About Love.By

Musa Okwonga. Rough Trade Books; 132

pages; £11.99

1949 and showing Alec, Jo, Val, Vern and

Ben alive and well, his alternative “reel of

time” winds on, stopping every 15 years

to chart the progress of each: what they

have endured, where they have ended up,

what challenges might lie ahead.

Bright boy Alec marries Sandra and

secures a job as a typesetter in Fleet

Street, but after a while both his relation-

ship and his future “in the print” are

threatened. Jo starts out as a singer in a

dingy Soho club and continues her un-

fulfilling musical journey as a rock star’s

girlfriend in the Hollywood Hills. And in

a series of colourful episodes, Vern grad-

uates from school bully to dodgy proper-

ty developer and makes his money (be-

fore losing it all) from “primping the

city’s past”.

The two other characters suffer their

share of hard knocks. Ben’s affecting

story takes him from psychiatric hospital

to hospice by way of unexpected salva-

tion. Val is unable to leave a Nazi boy-

friend who spends his days “bruising and

breaking”. One section of her tragicomic

tale begins with a farcical skinhead

meeting (“Who’d have thought that

national socialism demanded so many

sandwiches?”) and culminates in a bout

of sickening violence.

“Light Perpetual” lacks the exploits

and twists of Mr Spufford’s wonderful

debut novel, “Golden Hill”, which was set

in pre-revolutionary New York. Yet it

develops into both a brilliant character

study and a captivating ensemble piece.

The doubly imagined lives of his resusci-

tated five are skilfully rendered: grasping

Vern and his reversals of fortune provide

comic relief, the others elicit sympathy

as they achieve small triumphs and

weather dashed hopes and failed dreams.

Life, after all, is an opportunity to miss

opportunities, make mistakes—and,

sometimes, to put them right.

British fiction

Still lives

Light Perpetual.By Francis Spufford.

Scribner; 336 pages; $27. Faber & Faber;

£16.99

What might have been

F

rancis spufford’ssecond novel has

a basis in fact. His acknowledgments

inform readers that in 1944 a v2 rocket

destroyed a household-goods shop in

south London. Among the 168 fatalities

that day were 15 children. Similarly,

“Light Perpetual” begins with a wartime

explosion, in this case in the fictional

London borough of Bexford. Here the

German attack kills five children, rob-

bing them of all their possible futures:

“All the would-be’s, might-be’s, could-

be’s of the decades to come.”

Rather than sketching the aftermath

of the blast and introducing new charac-

ters, Mr Spufford instead imagines a

quirk of fate that intervened to save these

five young lives. After fast-forwarding to