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Restitution
- GenresFiction
266 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 25, 2025
Book Review: Restitution by Tamar Shapiro
Restitution is a profound debut novel that deftly intertwines intimate family drama with the seismic political shifts of 20th-century Germany. Tamar Shapiro’s narrative follows siblings Kate and Martin as they grapple with the legacy of their mother’s silenced East German past, uncovering buried secrets amid the reunification of a divided nation. The novel’s central questions—what is owed to the past, and whether fractured histories can ever truly be mended—resonate with urgency in our contemporary moment.
Shapiro’s prose is both lyrical and incisive, balancing the epic scope of geopolitical upheaval with the quiet devastation of familial estrangement. The Berlin Wall’s fall becomes a metaphor for the permeable yet persistent barriers between generations, cultures, and even siblings. Themes of displacement, identity, and the weight of inheritance are rendered with emotional precision, making Restitution a standout contribution to historical fiction.
How I would describe this book:
- A mesmerizing exploration of family secrets and national divides—Shapiro’s debut is as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally piercing.
- Like the best historical fiction, Restitution makes the past urgently present, asking what it means to reclaim what was lost—or to let it go.
- Haunting and gorgeously crafted, this novel lingers long after the last page.
Acknowledgments:
Thank you to Regal House Publishing for providing an advance review copy. Restitution is a testament to Shapiro’s talent and a gift to readers seeking fiction that challenges and illuminates.
Key Themes:
-Intergenerational Trauma: How unspoken histories shape familial bonds.
-Political vs. Personal: The interplay between national reunification and private reconciliation.
-Moral Ambiguity: The ethics of reclaiming stolen homes and confronting inherited guilt.
-Memory & Erasure: The fragility of personal narratives in the face of collective upheaval.
-Restitution is a triumph—a novel that demands reflection and discussion. Shapiro’s voice is one to watch.
Restitution is a profound debut novel that deftly intertwines intimate family drama with the seismic political shifts of 20th-century Germany. Tamar Shapiro’s narrative follows siblings Kate and Martin as they grapple with the legacy of their mother’s silenced East German past, uncovering buried secrets amid the reunification of a divided nation. The novel’s central questions—what is owed to the past, and whether fractured histories can ever truly be mended—resonate with urgency in our contemporary moment.
Shapiro’s prose is both lyrical and incisive, balancing the epic scope of geopolitical upheaval with the quiet devastation of familial estrangement. The Berlin Wall’s fall becomes a metaphor for the permeable yet persistent barriers between generations, cultures, and even siblings. Themes of displacement, identity, and the weight of inheritance are rendered with emotional precision, making Restitution a standout contribution to historical fiction.
How I would describe this book:
- A mesmerizing exploration of family secrets and national divides—Shapiro’s debut is as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally piercing.
- Like the best historical fiction, Restitution makes the past urgently present, asking what it means to reclaim what was lost—or to let it go.
- Haunting and gorgeously crafted, this novel lingers long after the last page.
Acknowledgments:
Thank you to Regal House Publishing for providing an advance review copy. Restitution is a testament to Shapiro’s talent and a gift to readers seeking fiction that challenges and illuminates.
Key Themes:
-Intergenerational Trauma: How unspoken histories shape familial bonds.
-Political vs. Personal: The interplay between national reunification and private reconciliation.
-Moral Ambiguity: The ethics of reclaiming stolen homes and confronting inherited guilt.
-Memory & Erasure: The fragility of personal narratives in the face of collective upheaval.
-Restitution is a triumph—a novel that demands reflection and discussion. Shapiro’s voice is one to watch.
November 29, 2025
I loved this novel! Reading it gave me this specific resonating feeling that made it impossible to put down! I read it from chapter one to the end in one huge gulp and felt so close to the narrator’s voice and story. I loved how the book weaves between a deeply authentic and edgy contemporary storyline with complex sibling and relations and an historical past. The feeling and mood of the back story drew me in as I wanted to understand how the narrator’s childhood and the wounds of mother, father and grandparents were deeply rooted in a time and place and inseparable from
History. As a third generation Chinese Taiwanese American with my own experiences of how our parents’ and grandparents’ migration and intergenerational unresolved stories the deeply integral storyline of coming to terms with one’s legacy of coming home to one’s self by accepting the legacy of my mother and grandmothers stories on my own life, reading this story was a remarkable experience! Tamar Shapiro is an extremely deep and fiercely passionate but controlled writer. I would read anything she writes as the sense of home she showed me was a truly remarkable contemporary story about forgiveness, love and understanding that makes this novel work on multiple levels - metaphorical, literal, symbolic, physical, and emotional terms.! I’ve been living through similar experience as my dad recently died. It’s la testimony to her literary brilliance that I had the thought that I’m living through your story right now and with every twist and turn around decisions and conflicts of homeland and identity!
Entering this novel and winding down the path of family history, of parents’ failings and loves, grandparents, how we grow up and lose our innocence, sibling relationships, loyalties and disappointments, and the contemporary starting point from which you wind us through the curving paths around what place, memory, childhood innocence, the safety of family, betrayal and secrets, grief and the bonds of family over time - have to do with a home, and its loss.
Can’t wait to buy her next novel in a heartbeat! You will not be disappointed!!
History. As a third generation Chinese Taiwanese American with my own experiences of how our parents’ and grandparents’ migration and intergenerational unresolved stories the deeply integral storyline of coming to terms with one’s legacy of coming home to one’s self by accepting the legacy of my mother and grandmothers stories on my own life, reading this story was a remarkable experience! Tamar Shapiro is an extremely deep and fiercely passionate but controlled writer. I would read anything she writes as the sense of home she showed me was a truly remarkable contemporary story about forgiveness, love and understanding that makes this novel work on multiple levels - metaphorical, literal, symbolic, physical, and emotional terms.! I’ve been living through similar experience as my dad recently died. It’s la testimony to her literary brilliance that I had the thought that I’m living through your story right now and with every twist and turn around decisions and conflicts of homeland and identity!
Entering this novel and winding down the path of family history, of parents’ failings and loves, grandparents, how we grow up and lose our innocence, sibling relationships, loyalties and disappointments, and the contemporary starting point from which you wind us through the curving paths around what place, memory, childhood innocence, the safety of family, betrayal and secrets, grief and the bonds of family over time - have to do with a home, and its loss.
Can’t wait to buy her next novel in a heartbeat! You will not be disappointed!!
June 19, 2025
Restitution is one of those deceptively short novels that slips quietly under your skin. Told with restraint and precision, it explores guilt, identity, and what we owe to both history and ourselves.
At its centre are siblings Kate and Martin, American-raised children of a German mother, who return to their family’s old house in East Germany after the Wall falls and begin to unpick the fractured, incomplete story of their past. As ever with this kind of material, it’s what isn’t said that resonates most loudly.
Shapiro’s style is spare but observant. There’s a constant sense of things not quite fitting—slightly off glances, paused conversations, the wrong tone at the wrong time—which works well given the subject matter. Kate, our narrator is highly attuned to these shifts and silences, and there’s a compelling unease as she begins to reckon with what may have been deliberately omitted or rewritten by those around her. This is less about discovering buried family secrets and more about realising how comfortable we all are with partial truths.
It’s also very good on the oddness of being both inside and outside a culture. The family’s initial return to Germany is charged not just with historical weight but with the kind of cultural dissonance that’s hard to pin down. This was one of things I responded to most in the book, the intimate look at what it felt like to experience the devastating partition of a nation and the subsequent reunification that was in its own way no less traumatic.
It’s not a showy book, but there are moments of great clarity, and something about the coolness of the prose makes the emotional weight hit harder when it does come. This book captures brilliantly the chaos of family life in crisis—the taut ties that hold people together, and the way in which, when those finally snap, everyone is flung much further apart than you'd expect.
Compelling, with a quiet intensity.
At its centre are siblings Kate and Martin, American-raised children of a German mother, who return to their family’s old house in East Germany after the Wall falls and begin to unpick the fractured, incomplete story of their past. As ever with this kind of material, it’s what isn’t said that resonates most loudly.
Shapiro’s style is spare but observant. There’s a constant sense of things not quite fitting—slightly off glances, paused conversations, the wrong tone at the wrong time—which works well given the subject matter. Kate, our narrator is highly attuned to these shifts and silences, and there’s a compelling unease as she begins to reckon with what may have been deliberately omitted or rewritten by those around her. This is less about discovering buried family secrets and more about realising how comfortable we all are with partial truths.
It’s also very good on the oddness of being both inside and outside a culture. The family’s initial return to Germany is charged not just with historical weight but with the kind of cultural dissonance that’s hard to pin down. This was one of things I responded to most in the book, the intimate look at what it felt like to experience the devastating partition of a nation and the subsequent reunification that was in its own way no less traumatic.
It’s not a showy book, but there are moments of great clarity, and something about the coolness of the prose makes the emotional weight hit harder when it does come. This book captures brilliantly the chaos of family life in crisis—the taut ties that hold people together, and the way in which, when those finally snap, everyone is flung much further apart than you'd expect.
Compelling, with a quiet intensity.
October 27, 2025
The story set against the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany is about the complicated relationship of Kate and Martin, both living in the United States but knowing very little of the lives of their mother and father and more so the secrets of their grandparents.
Like most immigrants the family kept secrets close to their hearts, worried that it would cause further disruption and unease amongst the children. They would prefer them to look forward and get on with their lives but in this case it could not be allowed to be forgotten. The visit back to Germany long after the fall of the wall, to places and homes owned by the family unravel very complicated and chequered histories.
Things do not appear to fit the dialogue and stories related of their grandparents and it leads to uneasiness between the siblings, each hiding information from the other - in some instances not to unravel bitter experiences and disappointments faced by the family in the past.
The story is very descriptive of each city of its setting. Leipzig, Grimma and Illinois. One could actually feel the places described. The siblings had a peculiar competitiveness especially Kate who sought her mothers approval and love, because she felt her mothers and fathers feelings were warmer to her brother. With that there was a undercurrent of vindictiveness and a certain meanness when she could hurt Martin in a very insidious way. The way she hid the information of her fathers last days, his demise and revealed it bluntly much later showed a mean streak because she was happy that she had the chance to see her father at the end though it was Martin that the father actually wanted. This was apparent on many occasions during the story. Martin himself took decisions which should have been shared, by himself. It did not make for a very warm relationship.
The story was slow but intense and emotional with its fractured relationships within one family.
Like most immigrants the family kept secrets close to their hearts, worried that it would cause further disruption and unease amongst the children. They would prefer them to look forward and get on with their lives but in this case it could not be allowed to be forgotten. The visit back to Germany long after the fall of the wall, to places and homes owned by the family unravel very complicated and chequered histories.
Things do not appear to fit the dialogue and stories related of their grandparents and it leads to uneasiness between the siblings, each hiding information from the other - in some instances not to unravel bitter experiences and disappointments faced by the family in the past.
The story is very descriptive of each city of its setting. Leipzig, Grimma and Illinois. One could actually feel the places described. The siblings had a peculiar competitiveness especially Kate who sought her mothers approval and love, because she felt her mothers and fathers feelings were warmer to her brother. With that there was a undercurrent of vindictiveness and a certain meanness when she could hurt Martin in a very insidious way. The way she hid the information of her fathers last days, his demise and revealed it bluntly much later showed a mean streak because she was happy that she had the chance to see her father at the end though it was Martin that the father actually wanted. This was apparent on many occasions during the story. Martin himself took decisions which should have been shared, by himself. It did not make for a very warm relationship.
The story was slow but intense and emotional with its fractured relationships within one family.
August 26, 2025
Hands down, Restitution was one of my favorites this year, both because of the story and the writing.
First, there's the story: Shapiro weaves the themes of grief and loss –both in Kate’s personal life, and family estrangement – with the historical scars of political and social division in Germany (boy, don't I feel smarter now!). And she does it very well: it's tight and moves fluidly from past to present through recollections and contemporary dynamics between siblings Kate and Martin. The result is a multi-layered story that drew me in from the first chapter and kept me in my seat, turning pages, until I finished it hours later!
The writing is simply lovely. I was especially drawn to Shapiro's excellent descriptions, from from the Illinois cornfields to the urban landscape of Leipzig, to the old homestead in Grimma – such that even though I’ve never been to any of those places, I felt like I could see them in passages like this: “…a white one-story ranch on the edge of town, brick frame around the front door, back porch giving out onto endless fields. Not prairie in the original sense, but our own version of the prairie, changing with the seasons. Tall green corn turning golden, then giving way to the warm brown stubble I loved most." and "Morning in Leipzig… Grand gray stone stretched for several city blocks, entrances on either end, doors wedged beneath stretching vertical lines of paned glass. Above them, a row of stone figures, so black with soot they faded into the building, the darkness of the night before now part of the building itself."
I highly recommend this novel. It leaves you feeling that warmth that only the best books can give.
First, there's the story: Shapiro weaves the themes of grief and loss –both in Kate’s personal life, and family estrangement – with the historical scars of political and social division in Germany (boy, don't I feel smarter now!). And she does it very well: it's tight and moves fluidly from past to present through recollections and contemporary dynamics between siblings Kate and Martin. The result is a multi-layered story that drew me in from the first chapter and kept me in my seat, turning pages, until I finished it hours later!
The writing is simply lovely. I was especially drawn to Shapiro's excellent descriptions, from from the Illinois cornfields to the urban landscape of Leipzig, to the old homestead in Grimma – such that even though I’ve never been to any of those places, I felt like I could see them in passages like this: “…a white one-story ranch on the edge of town, brick frame around the front door, back porch giving out onto endless fields. Not prairie in the original sense, but our own version of the prairie, changing with the seasons. Tall green corn turning golden, then giving way to the warm brown stubble I loved most." and "Morning in Leipzig… Grand gray stone stretched for several city blocks, entrances on either end, doors wedged beneath stretching vertical lines of paned glass. Above them, a row of stone figures, so black with soot they faded into the building, the darkness of the night before now part of the building itself."
I highly recommend this novel. It leaves you feeling that warmth that only the best books can give.
September 25, 2025
For some reason Goodreads doesn't have the blurb for this book, so here it is from NetGalley (who gave me an ecopy of the book in exchange for an honest review)
As children in Central Illinois, Kate and Martin were never told much about their mother’ s childhood in East Germany. And they rarely asked questions. They were too busy grappling with the heartache left behind by an absent father and the tough love of a mother forced to raise them alone in a country not her own. Decades later, when the Berlin Wall falls, Kate and Martin are faced with a difficult decision: Should they try to reclaim the house in East Germany from which their grandparents fled in the 1950s? They travel to their grandparents’ hometown and meet the couple now living in the house. But a house is never just a house, and the family secrets they discover reopen old wounds, driving the siblings apart just as divided Germany is coming together. Against the backdrop of German reunification, Restitution asks urgent questions that resonate today. What remains when people leave entire lives behind? What happens when personal histories are erased? And what— if anything— can heal these wounds?
This is a multilayered book with many themes, not least what makes a family? Is honesty the best thing to do? What lives in the silence when stories are not told? I found it well written and thoughtful. For me it was a more cerebral book than an emotional one and I'm not sure why that is. Particularly near the end I could see where I was meant to feel something, but found myself thinking about feelings more than feeling them. Despite this an interesting novel of complex families.
As children in Central Illinois, Kate and Martin were never told much about their mother’ s childhood in East Germany. And they rarely asked questions. They were too busy grappling with the heartache left behind by an absent father and the tough love of a mother forced to raise them alone in a country not her own. Decades later, when the Berlin Wall falls, Kate and Martin are faced with a difficult decision: Should they try to reclaim the house in East Germany from which their grandparents fled in the 1950s? They travel to their grandparents’ hometown and meet the couple now living in the house. But a house is never just a house, and the family secrets they discover reopen old wounds, driving the siblings apart just as divided Germany is coming together. Against the backdrop of German reunification, Restitution asks urgent questions that resonate today. What remains when people leave entire lives behind? What happens when personal histories are erased? And what— if anything— can heal these wounds?
This is a multilayered book with many themes, not least what makes a family? Is honesty the best thing to do? What lives in the silence when stories are not told? I found it well written and thoughtful. For me it was a more cerebral book than an emotional one and I'm not sure why that is. Particularly near the end I could see where I was meant to feel something, but found myself thinking about feelings more than feeling them. Despite this an interesting novel of complex families.
October 1, 2025
Restitution by Tamar Shapiro is an intimate, multi-layered story that follows siblings Kate and Martin, children of a tough mother who immigrated from East Germany and rarely spoke of the past.
Set against the seismic changes of German reunification, the book captures how political borders echo through personal relationships.
Kate and Martin go to Germany where old wounds resurface and drive siblings apart, paralleling the larger story of a country both coming together and unraveling.
This is not an easy or comforting read. Shapiro’s narrative is saturated with grief and struggle, and the drama and tension between Kate, Martin, and their mother feel particularly raw and alive.
Although this book is set in Germany, its themes reach far beyond its borders. As for someone living in Cyprus, with its divided capital, the story’s depiction of separation feels especially poignant. It’s a reminder that history, politics, and family heartbreak are intertwined, and that some wounds remain open across generations and nations.
Restitution stands out from more “hooked” or plot-driven novels, opting instead for slow-burning emotional complexity and honest character work. It’s a smart, empathetic book that asks what remains when entire lives and identities are uprooted, and what—if anything—can be reclaimed or healed in the aftermath.
Thanks to NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for the text provided in return for my honest review.
Set against the seismic changes of German reunification, the book captures how political borders echo through personal relationships.
Kate and Martin go to Germany where old wounds resurface and drive siblings apart, paralleling the larger story of a country both coming together and unraveling.
This is not an easy or comforting read. Shapiro’s narrative is saturated with grief and struggle, and the drama and tension between Kate, Martin, and their mother feel particularly raw and alive.
Although this book is set in Germany, its themes reach far beyond its borders. As for someone living in Cyprus, with its divided capital, the story’s depiction of separation feels especially poignant. It’s a reminder that history, politics, and family heartbreak are intertwined, and that some wounds remain open across generations and nations.
Restitution stands out from more “hooked” or plot-driven novels, opting instead for slow-burning emotional complexity and honest character work. It’s a smart, empathetic book that asks what remains when entire lives and identities are uprooted, and what—if anything—can be reclaimed or healed in the aftermath.
Thanks to NetGalley and Regal House Publishing for the text provided in return for my honest review.
October 10, 2025
Picked this ARC up from NetGalley because a story of family secrets intertwined with the history of East Germany sounded right up my street, and how true this was.
A very elegantly written story, this gorgeous slow burn is a generational family drama exploring the quiet power of memory, guilt, secrets and trauma. We follow the POV of Kate, the adult daughter of a German mother and an absent, alcoholic father, as she and her older brother Martin take multiple trips to Germany in the aftermath of the Berlin Wall falling. The title refers to “restitution before compensation”, when German families could pursue reclaiming houses they unlawfully lost to the Communist regime. Martin wants to reclaim the house that was built by their German grandparents from the couple who currently own the house, and so unfolds the sad and fractured story of this house, the challenging lives of their grandparents, and the complicated relationship between two siblings.
It’s told over decades and through flashbacks, and has a great & complex sibling storyline running through it, which isn’t something I often see in books… all set against a very interesting historical backdrop. The writing style really worked for me - observant, detailed, beautiful without being overly busy. The author was powerful in capturing the unsaid.
Really great novel. Highly recommend.
A very elegantly written story, this gorgeous slow burn is a generational family drama exploring the quiet power of memory, guilt, secrets and trauma. We follow the POV of Kate, the adult daughter of a German mother and an absent, alcoholic father, as she and her older brother Martin take multiple trips to Germany in the aftermath of the Berlin Wall falling. The title refers to “restitution before compensation”, when German families could pursue reclaiming houses they unlawfully lost to the Communist regime. Martin wants to reclaim the house that was built by their German grandparents from the couple who currently own the house, and so unfolds the sad and fractured story of this house, the challenging lives of their grandparents, and the complicated relationship between two siblings.
It’s told over decades and through flashbacks, and has a great & complex sibling storyline running through it, which isn’t something I often see in books… all set against a very interesting historical backdrop. The writing style really worked for me - observant, detailed, beautiful without being overly busy. The author was powerful in capturing the unsaid.
Really great novel. Highly recommend.
June 6, 2025
It’s been a long time since a novel moved me as much as Tamar Shapiro’s Restitution. Reading it left me in a stupor, and in awe of her fluency with storytelling and language. Every description is original, every line of dialogue, honest, and every complicated development, smoothed like a cloth to the table's edge. The plot is layered, but I was never lost, never unmoored. Shapiro is such a patient writer, knowing when the reader needs a bit more here, or when it’s time to linger there. On the surface, it’s a story about the German Democratic Republic, including the legal rights of pre-GDR landowners after the Berlin Wall falls. But the real walls here are between family members and dearest friends. Walls are built up and torn down, but the footings they were built on, the boundary lines, never quite disappear. And even if you can return something to its original owner, there is always a cost: between husbands and wives, fathers and their children. And siblings. Never have I read such an insightful take on the relationship between a sister and her brother. The jostles, the jealousies, the pinching—and the love. I felt it all so deeply in Restitution.
November 29, 2025
i went to the book signing in brooklyn with cecilia so that’s why i picked it up. it was an overall good read. it just took me a minute to get through despite it being a pretty short book. kate and martins relationship is very nuanced and i switched off on who i thought was “right” and i think that perfectly shows the complexity of it all bc neither of them were ever right. it was just the situation and how they were raised to handle. it was a niche story and was well told. it was a little plain of a book and i think that’s why it took so long for me to get through bc i was never engrossed by the story or the characters. it’s like that tv show u put on in the background and enjoy but it has a special place.
July 3, 2025
A fascinating novel exploring the complex issues that can arise when US descendants of German residents of East Germany who, in the 1950s were uprooted and had to relocate to West Germany, decide to make a claim for the property of their ancestors stolen or purchased for a song. Told from granddaughter Kate’s perspective as the German Reunification process opens up in the 1990s, it is also a story of her conflicted relationship with her brother Martin. Nicely written and structured. Thank you to thew author, publisher and NetGalley for a digital ARC.
November 17, 2025
Compelling read set in post-war Germany, both east and west, and a powerful reminder of the devastating impact that politics can have on the personal.
November 22, 2025
well written and a compelling story
September 21, 2025
This review first appeared on my blog - https://nsfordwriter.com - on 14th September 2025.
A thought-provoking, bittersweet novel about family secrets, the title Restitution refers to reclaiming property in East Germany. The story is mainly set in the 1990s but also covers the decades from the 50s, until contemporary times. Narrated by Kate, who lives in the US and is proud of her German roots, the story tells of her conflict with her brother Martin. After a series of bereavements, they revisit their grandparents' old house in East Germany and while Kate feels uneasy about disturbing the people who live there, Martin wants to pursue a claim. The story explores how and why their grandparents left, and the impact on her mother.
The simple yet elegant writing style really drew me into the book. The words have been chosen with care, but they feel natural. Although the content was sad and sometimes dark, there was catharsis. I felt that the narrative was too close to a history lecture at times, but at least it was informative and I learned more about East German politics. Multiple voices or flashbacks would have improved the reading experience for me, instead of everything being told to Kate.
I'd recommend this book. It's not my usual kind of read but I particularly liked the writing style and would read more from this author.
A thought-provoking, bittersweet novel about family secrets, the title Restitution refers to reclaiming property in East Germany. The story is mainly set in the 1990s but also covers the decades from the 50s, until contemporary times. Narrated by Kate, who lives in the US and is proud of her German roots, the story tells of her conflict with her brother Martin. After a series of bereavements, they revisit their grandparents' old house in East Germany and while Kate feels uneasy about disturbing the people who live there, Martin wants to pursue a claim. The story explores how and why their grandparents left, and the impact on her mother.
The simple yet elegant writing style really drew me into the book. The words have been chosen with care, but they feel natural. Although the content was sad and sometimes dark, there was catharsis. I felt that the narrative was too close to a history lecture at times, but at least it was informative and I learned more about East German politics. Multiple voices or flashbacks would have improved the reading experience for me, instead of everything being told to Kate.
I'd recommend this book. It's not my usual kind of read but I particularly liked the writing style and would read more from this author.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews