Tessa de Loo: The twins

Arcadia $29.95

Review: Jenny Jones

The subject matter of this novel is all-important, which makes me think it might have worked better as non-fiction.

Though by now a fair number of books have been written about the Holocaust years and their aftermath, there is still much healing to be done.

Not only must the Germans come to terms with their individual actions during the war, but citizens of other countries, especially European ones, must come to terms with these people still in their midst.

Experienced novelist Tessa de Loo, takes a pair of twins, born in Germany of German parents, who at age 6 are orphaned and separated. One remains in Germany, subjected to unimaginable abuse both physical and psychological; the other is sent to relatives in Holland, where she is loved and encouraged to fulfil her potential which, as it happens, includes giving shelter to Jews during the war.

The novel begins with the two arthritis-racked sisters recognising each other at a spa.

Over the next few days they relate their unshared pasts to one another.

Anna longs for reconciliation, but Lotte has repressed her early memories, ashamed of her German heritage in a land where it wasn't welcome. Her relations with Anna are strained and full of suppressed anger.

Many of the incidents in the past, especially those relating to Anna, are powerfully told.

De Loo invites us to look into the magic lantern of the early 20th century and fill in the gaps between the projection of one slide and the next.

So far, so good, and if we flip the slide projector on for a moment to sales, there's nothing wrong there either. The novel is a bestseller, which presumably means thousands of satisfied readers. But, as de Loo says, the slides have to be kept in proper sequence, and I do have a problem with what comes between.

Separated twins are hardy perennials as instruments of science, especially in nature versus nurture controversy.

Using them as an instrument of art, de Loo contrasts conditions of life for ordinary German people in Nazi Germany with conditions in Holland.

Art is the loser.

The novel becomes a vehicle for someone desperately trying to make sense of the war which separated, in such traumatic and inhuman ways, so many normally loving human beings from one another.

And while Anna's past is recounted with real pathos, Lotte's isn't a true creation.

It smacks of a writer too closely involved, who remembers, halfway through a scene, "Oh, but what about so-and-so - he came in at that point." So he is brought in again, even though it dilutes the power of the scene.

There's an ongoing case of adverbs being used to describe how a person said something when the utterance makes it clear anyway. And the sisters' discussions have a static quality - we are waiting for Lotte to heal enough to embrace the past and her sister once more.

De Loo contributes many worthwhile insights into the complexity of that especially terrible war and its long-term consequences.

Clearly, many readers are happy to take the novel on these terms alone. People are now willing to consider the war in more complex terms, and with application to humankind, not just one aberrant race.

* Jenny Jones is an Auckland writer.