The Pieces from Berlin

by Michael Pye

Book Overview

In the great disorder of wartime Berlin, Lucia Muller-Rossi was an unofficial star: mistress to an Ambassador, the whole world to her young son, and guardian of all the lovely things her Jewish... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375414363
• ISBN13: 9780375414367
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A lot to think about.

Michael Pye's book had the surprising ability to make me think about the Holocaust in some new ways. I say surprising because this moral ground has been well traveled in literature, theater and film. In the service of remembrance, we have all read or seen a vast litany of Nazi atrocities, with the unintended and unfortunate effect of making us numb to the horror.But Pye does a remarkable job of showing us that there is still a lot to talk about. The character Lucia morphs from textbook villain, to misunderstood mother, to even greater villain without ever becoming a cartoon. Her actions can make the reader alternately sympathize with and abhor her.Even more interesting are the questions of national and religious identity. Just when you think you've figured out the books moral point of view, a revelation about one of the main characters gets you thinking all over again.

Life's decisions and rationalizations

Pye has written a beautiful book about a flawed person, Lucia Muller-Rossi. This 92-year-old matriarch, living in Zurich, made out extremely well during World War II, not only stealing (or "saving", as she rationalizes) antiques and art pieces from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but also informing the Nazis on the whereabouts of her Jewish friends. Toward the end of the war, when Berlin was about to fall, Muller-Rossi was able to take these possessions out of Berlin in several large trucks, cross the border into Switzerland, and set up shop. The book's action is built around two hard-to-believe coincidences. First, that one of her victims happens to walk past Muller-Rossi's store window and recognize a table that had been taken from her 60 years earlier. Second, that right at that moment when the victim, Sarah Freeman, spots the table, Muller-Rossi's granddaughter walks by, sees Freeman crying, and asks what's wrong. Seemingly implausible, but I bought it. What I struggled with was why Muller-Rossi's granddaughter, Helen, and son -- Helen's father, Nicholas -- were so willing to side with Freeman at the expense of Muller-Rossi. We simply had to take this leap that son and granddaughter were willing to accept a stranger's story without giving Lucia a chance to explain her side of events. As a reader of a novel, we did get a sense of Lucia's side, but unfortunately, there wasn't much to like. She was, plain and simple, an opportunist without much of a decent bone in her body, mother of a young son during wartime or not. Although Pye's writing and evocation of time and place is splendid, the book would ultimately have been more powerful if Muller-Rossi had been created as a more sympathetic character. One of Pye's key points is that life can be quite grey. Unfortunately, his main character comes off as black-and-white.