As \u201c33 Place Brugmann\u201d opens in August 1939, the residents of this eponymously named apartment building in Brussels sense the coming storm. With the Great War concluded only twenty years earlier, Germany is once again ascendant and militarized. More than invasion, which seems inevitable, the Belgians, especially those who are Jewish, fear occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tenants are a diverse group, among them: an architect and his precocious teenage daughter, Charlotte (who is chief among the characters); an art dealer who is Jewish; a retired army officer; a Russian refugee; and the building supervisor, who favors the Nazis. As the Germans approach, the art dealer and his family flee to Scotland (but do not escape the reach of the war), while the others confront the daily indignities of life under the eyes of the Gestapo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The beauty of Austen\u2019s storytelling is that is doesn\u2019t descend into tropes. It is multi-dimensional. While, yes, anxiety and paranoia are endemic within 33 Place Brugmann, there are also celebration of small victories, recognition of the restorative power of art, and presence of the persistent, simmering belief \u2013 growing as the years pass \u2013 that survival is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c33 Place Brugmann\u201d made me think of Anthony Doerr\u2019s \u201cAll the Light We Cannot See\u201d (2017), the story of another father-daughter family caught in the same war. In comparison, Doerr\u2019s book is richer and more complex, but that is not to take anything away from \u201c33 Place Brugmann,\u201d which is equally human and equally effective at capturing the long violence of war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
War inflicts two types of violence: immediate and protracted. The former arrives as a bullet or a bomb, come and gone in an instant; the latter, though, lingers, suppressing the defeated through a deliberate, ongoing degradation of individual and civic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[957,956,770,837,955],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-alice-austen","tag-belgium","tag-book-review","tag-novel","tag-world-war-ii"],"yoast_head":"\nBookshelf \u2013 33 Place Brugmann, Alice Austen - Tim Porter's Second Draft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As \u201c33 Place Brugmann\u201d opens in August 1939, the residents of this eponymously named apartment building in Brussels sense the coming storm. 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