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Masquerade
When Eddie Livingstones took a tutoring job in Schleswig-Holstein in 1929 all he was thinking about was bringing his German up to the standard required for the Foreign Office examination. But from the moment of his arrival at the Enchantingly beautiful rococo house set deep in the forest at the edge of the dark lake from which it took its name, Schwarzensee, he found himself in a world cut off from the twentieth century, cut off from society, isolated, inward-looking and entwined with the past.
That there were reasons as dark and secret as the lake itself for this breaking off of all but the barest contact with the outer world, he soon comes to realise. His pupil Alexander is an intensely attractive, intelligent boy. He wants to escape from his backwater and embark on a stage career. In helping him to do so Eddie involves himself in the unexpected guilt of the family.
Schwarzensee had been the home of the Plevke family since it had been given to them by Catherine the Great. The Count Plevke of the day had been one of her lovers and had had a hand in the murder of the mad Czar that brought her to the throne. The Russian Imperial Eagle is a prominent motif in the decoration of the Schloss. Its owner, the old Countess, Alexander's grandmother, has half come to identify herself with the Empress. The clock had stopped at the end of the eighteenth century.
Years later Eddie is serving in the British Embassy at Vienna. Hitler is threatening his neighbours. Austria will fall at any moment: Czechoslovakia is already feeling the tremors. Alexander's reappearance as a world-famous actor sets off a chain of events in Eddie's life that ends where it began at Schwarzensee, ruined, like the rest of Europe, in the German catastrophe.
That there were reasons as dark and secret as the lake itself for this breaking off of all but the barest contact with the outer world, he soon comes to realise. His pupil Alexander is an intensely attractive, intelligent boy. He wants to escape from his backwater and embark on a stage career. In helping him to do so Eddie involves himself in the unexpected guilt of the family.
Schwarzensee had been the home of the Plevke family since it had been given to them by Catherine the Great. The Count Plevke of the day had been one of her lovers and had had a hand in the murder of the mad Czar that brought her to the throne. The Russian Imperial Eagle is a prominent motif in the decoration of the Schloss. Its owner, the old Countess, Alexander's grandmother, has half come to identify herself with the Empress. The clock had stopped at the end of the eighteenth century.
Years later Eddie is serving in the British Embassy at Vienna. Hitler is threatening his neighbours. Austria will fall at any moment: Czechoslovakia is already feeling the tremors. Alexander's reappearance as a world-famous actor sets off a chain of events in Eddie's life that ends where it began at Schwarzensee, ruined, like the rest of Europe, in the German catastrophe.
335 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 12, 2021
Part historical novel, part psychological thriller, Masquerade, the fairly unoriginal story of an ingenue grappling with his encounter with a more fascinating character, doesn't quite know what it is meant to be, stifled as it is by a central flaw.
Although her material is not uninteresting and her writing is easy and flowing, Sternberg seems too timorous in her approach. Because they are related by a reticent observer only indirectly involved, the more impactful elements of the plot are dulled and drowned in a sea of less colourful minutia. Her insistence at various parts of the book on the idea that history mirrors itself exactly is not only an odd but, more crucially, restrictive concept that she abandons in the end in any case.
But more importantly, Sternberg shies from a seemingly obvious side of her story, leaving a nebulous and unfortunate gap at the heart of her book. Although incidental mentions of homosexuality pepper the narrative, usually with censorious undertones, making at least one of her main characters either gay or, even better, bisexual, by adding complexity and hidden possibilities, would have helped explain the unusual bond between Eddie and Alexander, while infusing extra tension into the plot.
For a queer reader, all the elements are there and it seems only the author's reticence in embracing her material fully stops this side of the story from being developed and revealed. This is unfortunately the real and almost only masquerade presented to the reader here. Although the theme of the mask appears in the latter parts of the book it isn't otherwise that prominent; certainly not enough to inspire the title for the whole book.
The book, which is divided in two parts, is entertaining and sustains the reader's interest well enough, but it lacks that extra spark that would have made it more meaningful and engagingly thrilling.
Although her material is not uninteresting and her writing is easy and flowing, Sternberg seems too timorous in her approach. Because they are related by a reticent observer only indirectly involved, the more impactful elements of the plot are dulled and drowned in a sea of less colourful minutia. Her insistence at various parts of the book on the idea that history mirrors itself exactly is not only an odd but, more crucially, restrictive concept that she abandons in the end in any case.
But more importantly, Sternberg shies from a seemingly obvious side of her story, leaving a nebulous and unfortunate gap at the heart of her book. Although incidental mentions of homosexuality pepper the narrative, usually with censorious undertones, making at least one of her main characters either gay or, even better, bisexual, by adding complexity and hidden possibilities, would have helped explain the unusual bond between Eddie and Alexander, while infusing extra tension into the plot.
For a queer reader, all the elements are there and it seems only the author's reticence in embracing her material fully stops this side of the story from being developed and revealed. This is unfortunately the real and almost only masquerade presented to the reader here. Although the theme of the mask appears in the latter parts of the book it isn't otherwise that prominent; certainly not enough to inspire the title for the whole book.
The book, which is divided in two parts, is entertaining and sustains the reader's interest well enough, but it lacks that extra spark that would have made it more meaningful and engagingly thrilling.
Displaying 1 of 1 review