A Night Divided

This book was one that I was looking forward to. I had seen it first in my days student teaching, and was excited to hear that it would be about a topic than many people have never heard about, the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. Then I got a hold of the book, and it was good...with some major exceptions.

Firstly, the best thing about this book is the spectacle of the setting. Not many historical fiction books are about the Berlin Wall, and even fewer take place on the eastern side of it. This definitely makes for an interesting read for someone like me, who is very interested in history. Many of the elements seemed to be historically accurate. It is the best aspect of this book by far.

Yet, that is the only real good thing about this book. Many of the problems stems from the writing style which includes a lack of description, especially for many of the characters. Many of them have little or no details about them other than their name and relation to the main character. Often, I found myself forgetting the names of the characters in between reading sessions. This is not exactly a good thing, especially when this is the only fiction book I am currently reading. Also, the ideas the main character, Gerta, comes up with, and her thought process seem terribly convenient at best, and solely plot driven at worst. Or example, in one situation, she keeps thinking that her father, who wants to dig in a certain building close to the wall, is asking her to find buried treasure, when this building is literally feet from the wall and West Berlin. The author acts like it is a huge revelation that she is to dig a tunnel over to the other side of Germany, but I, and the reader, should have had this figured out by reading the front cover of the book. This makes the main character seem somewhat dimm. Yet, she is able to somehow figure out how to cover up building a tunnel right under the wall. These leaps in logic and thinking are more for the author trying to make it seem like Gerta is very smart rather than anything else.

Then there is the problem that this book is for it's intended audience. I just do not think they will get much out of it reading on their own. If it weren't for the wall, it would seem like another dystopian book that is all the rage these days. If it were part of a class text, them perhaps the teacher could offer some of the background, but as it is, you get no clues into communism, what it is, or why the wall goes up in the first place, nor the larger ideological struggle.

In the end, for me, it is the lack of description that hurts this book. I can't even remember the name of the main character, it is that bad. Then there is the fact that I just read the book Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. In that book, the characters are well more defined by dialogue, actions and identifying features than anything in this book. Therefore I give this book a two out of five,