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Book Reviewed by:A much-anticipated debut from a remarkable new talent in Irish fiction—a terrifyingly intimate story of a war marriage caught up in the calamity of World War II
In a desperate bid to escape the trenches of the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met, in a marriage of convenience that promises 'honeymoon' leave for him and a pension for her should he die in the war. With ten days' leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin and both are surprised by the passion that develops between them.
When Peter returns to the horror of the front, it is only the dream of Katharina that sustains him as he approaches Stalingrad. Back in Berlin, Katharina, goaded on by her desperate and delusional parents, ruthlessly works her way into Nazi high society, wedding herself, her young husband, and her unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina find their simple dream of family cast in tragic light and increasingly hard to hold on to.
Reminiscent of Bernard Schlink's The Reader, this is an unforgettable novel of marriage, ambition, and the brutality of war, which heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new voice in international fiction.
The Undertaking is a remarkable piece of writing. Throughout, Magee's language is both unflinching and spare. Similarly to Pat Barker in her World War I novels, Magee's descriptions are stripped of metaphor and simile and her dialogue is crisp and vivid. Moreover, this is one of those rare historical novels that wears its research so lightly that the reader can forget that this is a story set in the past and simply move into the scenes and lives of its characters...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Kate Braithwaite).
Berlin, August 20th, 1942
My dear Peter,
The Fuhrer has just announced that we are to take Stalingrad. To hear it from our leader's lips is thrilling. Imagine it, Peter, a German Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Volga. It is beyond anything I could have hoped for. The man is truly a genius.
And you are to be part of it, Peter. I am very proud of you and promise to stop badgering you about home leave.
This is the opening of one of Katherina's letters to her husband Peter in Audrey Magee's The Undertaking. Peter is an infantryman and his wife assures him that the German army will have taken Stalingrad in a couple of weeks. But true to the historical facts, as Peter and his fellow soldiers press forward...
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Life is the garment we continually alter, but which never seems to fit.
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Colm Toibin
The Undertaking is written with sympathy and skill. The narrative is tense and engaging, filled with complex undertones, impelled by an urgency and a deep involvement with the characters.
