The Girl in Berlin

by Elizabeth Wilson

"This is a clever, well-written, and carefully plotted novel in which class, hypocrisy, moral corruption, treachery, and taboos ancient and modern are cunningly interwoven."— The Times Summer, 1951. Two suspected spies, Burgess and Maclean, have disappeared, and the nation is obsessed with their whereabouts. Speculation is at fever pitch when Colin Harris, a member of the Communist Party who has been in Germany for several years, turns up to see his old friends Dinah and Alan Wentworth. He has he has fallen in love with a girl in East Berlin, and is coming home—with her—for good. Meanwhile, Jack McGovern, who sometimes feels like the only decent man in Special Branch, has a rendezvous with a real spy. Miles Kingdom thinks there's a mole at MI5, and he wants McGovern's help. A novel about secrets, betrayal, and unearthing the truth, The Girl in Berlin is a reminder that when nothing is as it seems, no one can be trusted—even those you think you know best. Elizabeth Wilson is an independent researcher and writer best known for her commentaries on feminism and popular culture. She is currently a visiting professor at the London College of Fashion. Her novels The Twilight Hour and War Damage are also published by Serpent's Tail.

Genres: Espionage, Historical

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2012

About the author

Elizabeth Wilson is a pioneer in the development of fashion studies, and has been a university professor, feminist campaigner and activist. Her writing career began in the ‘underground’ magazines of the early 1970s, (Frendz, Red Rag, Spare Rib, Come Together) before she became an academic. She's written for the Guardian and her non-fiction books include Adorned in Dreams (1985, 2003), The Sphinx in the City (1992) (shortlisted for the Manchester Odd Fellows Prize), Bohemians (2000) and Love Game (2014) (long listed for the William Hill sportswriting prize), as well as six crime novels, including War Damage (2009) and The Girl in Berlin (2012) (long listed for the Golden Dagger Award).

There is more than one author with this name in the database. This is the disambiguation profile for authors named Elizabeth Wilson.

Reviews

[Rose A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this! The writing flows well and the author really captured the feel of the period. References were oblique and you had to work - this isn't a novel which hands you a linear mystery and then solves it for you carefully with everything spelled out. Unlike some readers, I liked that and I didn't find it at all confused. If you're interested in the Cold War and what a readable, slow-burn spy mystery, I'd recommend this.

[Tripfiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novel set in London and Berlin (“Be careful who you bring when you come in from the cold…”)

It’s May 1951 in England and Burgess and Maclean have recently disappeared. Elisabeth Wilson’s novel is set against the background of the public’s surprise and shock over the news of spies defecting, and concerns the hunt to find other spies, particularly the one believed to be in MI5.

In London Anthony Blunt’s staff at the Courtauld Institute of Art adore him, and are shocked at the suggestions that he could be involved in any spying scandal. The book’s character Dinah works at the Courtauld, so gives an insight into Blunt’s life at this time. Dinah’s husband works at the BBC and is also, unwittingly, drawn into the world of spies and espionage. He, like many of the other characters in the book also has another side hidden from his wife and friends. Wonderful examples are given of social behaviours in the 1950s, as the charade of normality covers investigations and goings on that are (according to the book) common at this time.

The book is a wonderful blend of fact and fiction, leading the reader into various private gardens, along London canals, Wimbledon and the world of art. Many of the fictitious characters in the book are not quite certain of what their exact role is and how the part they are playing fits into the desperate race to track down spies. The subtleties of their recruitment, and operating methods, is quite fascinating.

The reader is taken to East (and West) Berlin, at this time of enormous change, and many comparisons made with life in England. Again all is in confusion there as to who can be trusted, who is working for who and what is safe. The descriptions of life in the 1950s are fascinating, and the author certainly builds up suspense and interest as events evolve.

Unfortunately I found that after a riveting start the characters failed to develop, and therefore the story lost its way (for me) in the middle, though the ending pulled everything together and was well worth reaching. Having finished the book, I can now look back and think how much I learnt about life at that time during the Cold War, and how interesting the book was, however at the time of reading that was not so apparent.

[GONZA · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn´t like this book and I have not even finished it, the plot is not clear, too many characters and some of them I haven´t understood their role; this is probably due to the fact that this book is the third installation in a series, or maybe not. Anyway too complicated and not a spy story in the "original" sense of the word.

Non mi é piaciuto questo libro e infatti non l'ho nemmeno finito perché la trama non é chiara e ci sono troppi personaggi che vanno e vengono e il cui ruolo non é chiaro; questo potrebbe anche essere dovuto al fatto che é il terzo libro di una serie, ma anche no. Comunque troppo complicato e non la spy story che mi aspettavo.

[Chris Skidmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

The latest Elizabeth Wilson makes an interesting comparison with Len Deighton and John Le Carre in using 50s Berlin as a background as well as her usually convincing London venues. Kept me reading to the end though!

[Tony Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark noir thriller set in the early 1950s - in theme and tone not unlike Alan Furst or Le Carre but marked by a hyper-acute eye for how people looked, what they wore and how they functioned socially.

[Tracey Sinclair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written but never quite as engaging as I wanted it to be: I felt there were too many disparate strands, most of which I didn't really care about, and despite being about a time period and place which fascinate me, I was never truly gripped.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but the plot twists at the end were all introduced very late, and didn't resolve several of the story's threads.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seems I'm the only person who actually full-on loved this without picking it apart, but I thought Elizabeth Wilson's 50's set psychological spy thriller was absolutely splendid. It was smart, there's no denying the tremendous prose and multi-layered way the plot unveiled itself was wonderful and, admittedly this is small, but it is perhaps the first and only time I'll ever see farting used as an adjective, outside of... well, the usual term (and on the first page!).

Our hero Jack McGovern, arts lover Dinah, unfaithful Alan, naive ol' Colin Harris and of course the mysterious Miles Kingdom and the secretive titular girl from Berlin. This cast of characters light up the page and Wilson writes them fascinatingly. I might be a little too empty-headed to get everything that went on in this book and say with complete clarity that I knew what was going on but I enjoyed every enigmatic moment of it.

Definitely has a Third Man vibe to it. Could totally see a BBC adaptation with Ben Whishaw as Colin and Sophie Rundle as Dinah.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually hadn't planned on reading this novel, but I wanted to switch from reading my ebooks on the Libby app on the iPad and start reading on the little Kobo Mini that I bought on special a large number of years ago. I've only really used it to read Gutenberg free epubs, and I figured I'd give it a go with library books.



That's why you buy a Kobo, after all. Kindles won't let you read library books, because Capitalist New Fascism won.

But more on that later.

So I wanted to practise downloading a book onto the Kobo, and didn't want to accidentally mess up the next Karin Müller novel I had a hold on, waiting for it to come available. So I did a quick search for "Berlin" to see what would come up, and this novel came up. A novel from that ever expanding "A/The Girl In/From/On/At The..." series. A companions series to the equally popular "A/The Woman In/From/On/At The..." series.

I read a few reviews, and most said that it had problems, but I borrowed it anyways, as I had no actual plans to read it, right?

Downloaded some Adobe software onto my Mac, co-ordinated several bits of chicanery to get everything to talk to each other, moved the epub (which is not really an epub, until you've processed it through several layers of software to change it from an .acsm) onto the Kobo, and...

It worked.

So that was great.

And then I finished reading "Stasi Wolf", and the next novel in the series was still on loan...

I have about two dozen books that I've planned on reading, sitting here on shelves in person...

So of course I started reading this scratch novel that I downloaded at random.

Some of the reviews had said that there were too many characters, and you really needed some sort of Murder Board to keep track of who everyone was, who they were sleeping with, and why. Well, I'd recently read "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", so I was used to the overblown cast and crew of these sort of novels.

And what sort is that?

Well, it's a teddibly Bwitish sort of early Cold War thriller. So there's a lot of office politics, and lots of interpersonal intrigue. Very much like the now late John le Carré, actually, who was probably the writer that Betty Wilson was trying to emulate.

But it's not just a five finger exercise on how to write a Cold War and Cuppa Tea thriller. You get to learn some things, too. It's set around the Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean (not the Starry Starry Night bloke, the other one) scandal, and how that particular indiscretion between some highly placed products of the English Class System and the Soviet Union had soured relations between the two other major Empires (other, that is, than the Soviet Union) to have more or less survived the Second World War: the British (survived) and the American (prospered).



Wilson does accent very, very well. At first it sounds a bit clunky, and I was almost skim reading whole pages (something I never usually do) at the very start, but then you get the rhythm and can see what she's doing (or I did, anyway - you might get it straight off) and then it becomes almost enjoyable. At least clever.

You get to see this whole scandal from pretty much every angle, and you get a number of portraits of people in different positions in the spy business in the mid 1950s. I found reading the Wikipedia article on Guy Burgess most enlightening.

So well done, Betty. It's quite intelligent and well constructed writing.

One idea it sets up in your mind for consideration is why Britain remains in the Elite Intelligence Club at all. When the New Fascism was taking over the world, and the East and West were drawing their ideological lines in the economy, why did the United States see the British as worthwhile having on their side? Sure, the Brits (well, Alan Turing) had solved that Enigma thing, but that wouldn't have made any difference to the US, who were really only getting involved in the war because the Japanese were taking exception to their annexation of the Pacific Ocean. For several years, the US had shown no interest in defeating National Socialism in Europe, and had stood by and allowed nations to fall in flames to the Nazis. So then two and a half years driving tanks around the streets of Germany meant that they had to become great chums with the British?

Curious.

So let's put some damaged people into a historical fiction detective story and see how that helps with understanding that little enigma.

Which Wilson does, but the problems the damaged characters face are not all that helpful in this regard. Sure, there are searing insights into British society at the time, but it goes only a very short distance beyond that.

In my humble opinion.

The eponymous Girl, for example, is actually only a minor character. She is the lynchpin to many of the mysteries that need solving, but you never really get to feel like she is why you are there. There was so much more potential for that character to have made this not only an intelligent novel, but an insightful one, too.

In fact, I wonder if "The Girl In Berlin" was the original title. Marketing concerns aside, it's not really as apt as, say, "Two Toffs Bugger It Up For The Yanks".



Of course, had it been called that, it wouldn't have come up in my search, and I wouldn't have read it. So.

I'm giving it four stars because I think a reader could definitely enjoy this, as I did, but it's not getting the solid gold five "I-wish-I'd-written-this" rating. Mainly because of that Girl not being fully filled in, and it not truly engaging with the ideas that I felt it raised.

See what you think and then, you know...



TELL NO ONE!!!

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 3 out of 5]

On one level The Girl in Berlin works quite well. It is quite nicely written with some nice attention to detail concerning London and Berlin in 1951, including fashion, politics, and sense of place. Many of scenes are well framed and engaging. On another level, however, the book seems quite disjointed and the plotting somewhat ponderous. While Detective McGovern plays the central character, rather than follow him exclusively, Wilson weaves together a number of intersecting threads centred on a set of characters. Some of these are much more crucial to the mystery aspects of the book than others, with some interchanges have little bearing on the case. The result is a storyline that seems more literary than crime/spy orientated and a plot that seems to make little sense at times. Consequently, while the story had its moments, overall it lacked coherence and didn’t ring true.

[Laura Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rambling and pointless

This book jumped between dozens of characters which were barely connected. I kept waiting for the tension to begin to build, but it only did near the end. But then after that, you still never found out anything about the title character. This was a frustrating let-down.

[David Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea is good but the execution is deeply flawed. This could have been a good espionage thriller or a good historical novel set in Cold War London. Trying to conflate the two was a serious error of judgement.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2013/0...

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this atmospheric 2012 novel. It's set in London and Berlin in 1951 at the time of the defection of Burgess and MacLean. Special Branch officer, Jack McGovern, and his well-drawn off-sider, Jarrell, investigate a Communist returned from East Berlin and subsequent murders on behalf of MI5’s Miles Kingdom taking McGovern to a Berlin where no-one can be trusted. A BBC documentary maker and his wife plus the girl from Berlin figure in an intriguing Cold War read, true to the time, and going in an unexpected direction.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The Girl in Berlin" is set in post WWII London and Berlin, dealing with the recovery and rebuilding efforts, touching on the struggles of citizens after the war, and delving into the spy/espionage scene during 1951 Cold War times. This scene is populated with various main characters--Agent McGovern who is tasked with following a possible spy named Colin Harris over to Berlin, the enigmatic Kingdom who serves as a contact in MI5 for McGovern, and seems to have his finger in *lots* of pies, a reporter named Alan who is married to the lovely Dinah, knows Colin from way back, and is pushing the moral boundaries of married life. Then there is the actual girl in Berlin. A mysterious young lady named Frieda who is trying to convince Colin to marry her and whisk her away to England for reasons only she knows. Have I confused you yet?

Pros: The setting is interesting, and the ambiguity/difficulty of living in Berlin during the decade following WWII is described well.
~The plot picks up during the last 50 or so pages of the book, and readers who slogged along till then are rewarded with a few unexpected twists.

Cons: Before the plot picks up as mentioned before, the reader deals with 200+ pages of confusing storyline. There is very little or no flow between chapters, the story doesn't seem tied together well, and way to many characters are introduced way to fast with very little character development which makes it difficult to have an emotional investment in the story.
~Although the acceleration of the plot towards the end was probably meant to cause page-turning tension, the lack of character development made me care very little what actually happened or how the story ended.

Overall rating--2 stars or average.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

...it is after the end of the Second World War, but there is no peace. A new war surfaces, in the shadows, between the West and the Soviet Union. "The Girl In Berlin" centers around the Cold War hysteria in the early 1950's. Part of it is borrowed from actual events, such as the "Cambridge Five", although the main characters are fictional. The book itself is a dark, noir novel, wrapped in historical fiction. Underneath charm and beauty, lies horrible secrets.

Although "The Girl in Berlin" ends in a satisfying, though twisted, fashion, it takes a while to get going. Moreover, the myriad of characters, some of whom appear only once, lends some confusion to the narrative. Yet, I did find that the overall story to be fairly engaging, and decidedly well-written. Some of the style reminds me a bit of John Le Carre, although not heavily. While reading, I went back to my review of "The Good German" and similar themes about the desperate times in postwar Berlin appear in "The Girl in Berlin" as well. I will admit that the book was something of a surprise, randomly found while browsing a bookstore. For me, it did not disappoint.

[Clay Stafford]

Today’s Killer Nashville Featured Books take me around the world, but they all have two things common: non-stip suspense and brains.

Class differences are once again at play in “The Girl from Berlin,” the third novel set in the 1950s from spy writer Elizabeth Wilson. There is Communist paranoia everywhere, along with defections, and then murder. As one would expect in a tale of espionage, characters are not what they seem. Paranoia will haunt you as you try to make sense of who you can and cannot trust, not only on an international level, but also personal. Be careful of Wilson’s misdirection; she’ll lead you away. This is the third novel from Wilson set in the same 1950s timeframe involving duplicitous characters playing various major and minor roles as the series unfolds.

My Review of The Girl in Berlin on Killer Nashville
My Other Reviews on Killer Nashville

[Wilde Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1951, during the ‘Cold War’, a detective becomes involved in espionage when he is asked to investigate a scientist and an English communist who lives in East Berlin.

I found this story slow paced and some of the writing was stodgy / repetitive – a good edit could have cut fifty pages out of this book and made it better. The jumpy narrative, constantly switching between characters and viewpoint, was disappointing. The book did pick up towards the end up but the two plot motivations felt at odds with other / out of place (compared to the rest of the book).

Overall I found this book disappointing and I would rate it 2.5.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot unveils itself intriguingly, but the style of this novel is very genre-specific; there's a lot of telling, not showing, each character's motivation is given when they are introduced and the descriptive passages are riddled with clichés. However, Wilson's thorough research shines through.

It's not so much a whodunnit as a whydunnit, and the murder turns out not to be the important thing, it's almost a red herring in itself. Wilson has a sophisticated approach to politics: neither the communists nor the west are portrayed as anything other than venal and self-serving. As for the Berliners, it's survival that's important, not ideology. Only the pragmatic get a happy ending.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

post wwii spy ish novel and mystery by a smart, academic feminist. atmosphere is thick, with architecture, travel, clothes, food, drink, art described. the cold war, consequences of anarchy at end of wwii with berlin as epicenter, for black market, nazis scurrying to their rat holes (many in uk and usa, nice....fuckers) ussr consolidating power and borders through police and state terror, and like said, a mystery of a girl. a smart book,

[John Braden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the weight of the responses here. Some aspects of the novel are very good, e.g., the look and feel of post-war London and Berlin. The writing at times left me with a ho-hum feeling and there was a great deal of expositional water-treading towards the end to wrap things up that maybe should have been parceled out during the narrative. Still, the story twisted nicely, the title proving to be grimly ironic, as was the intent, but it took a while to get going.

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the book. A good spy novel based in the early 50s. The background is accurate and well drawn, but the characters are sketchy, you just get drawn in and it leaps to someone else. The characters only finally link together at the very end, and you are still left with unanswered questions- frustrating.

[Janice Gill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. The plot was a little far-fetched but I liked the style and era

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://theunreadbookshelf.wordpress.c...

[Nell Davidson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to follow, if you ever put it down, yet I persevered to the end.
Can't figure out why it didn't work better since there are some good characters.

[Spitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

gloomy, lifeless characters, but such juicy material.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a number of interesting characters but the one at the heart of the story, the 'girl' is the one whose story is never properly told.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. It had shades of LeCarre and I enjoyed the writing.