A good read - the aftermath of political divide. Loose ends caused by the East West Germany split and rejoining. Although the book moved very slow at times, I enjoyed the book and will recommend it. ( )

Excellent story telling - lots of coincidences and links between characters - did he recognize her on the last page?? ( )

This novel visits East Germany before and after reunification, and evokes the atmosphere, the sights and sounds of the time, very successfully. In it, Peter – an English student - learns his father is not the man who brought him up but an unnamed East German political prisoner. This changes his life and he sets out to “become” German, learning the language, qualifying as a doctor in West Germany. The plot concerns his search for his father, and a fleeting relationship with a girl he meets on a trip to Leipzig and later tries to trace once the wall has come down.

Outside of the main plot, things happen – in fact this is a long, very densely packed book, but the plot was what kept me reading through the middle sections where little seemed to be achieved towards the story’s aims. I am sure the writing was rich in metaphor, and a second reading might well bring this to the fore. What I did find as the book progressed was reason after reason not to like Peter very much – his treatment of his family back home, his relationships with women in general...and yet I did want him to succeed in his quest.

After a long period of zero progress, Peter finally makes a breakthrough and a rapid rifle-fire of revelation after revelation threatened to leave me confused. But there is something about this novel that is compelling – I suspect a year after reading it I will struggle to recall many plot details but when you are in the moment it demands your attention. Reaching the end I was unsure whether I was in awe of the author’s edge of the seat writing, or cross with him for putting me through the wringer. ( )

At age 16 Peter Hithersay learns that his real father is an East German political prisoner with whom his mother had a one-night affair. She returns to England, marries and raises Peter as the son of her husband. His response to learning this is to flee to Germany in search of his father and almost cutting his English family out of his life. History does, however repeat itself when he is in Leipzig for a weekend and falls in love and then publicly denies this love. He completes his medical studies but his mother's and his love affairs dominant his behaviour until the age of 40 when he returns to Leipzig to return the ashes of a patient to her family. This second visit brings him some closure. The pace of the book is enjoyable, slow and smooth, however the author could have tightened up the second half which focuses on Peter's life in Berlin as a doctor. ( )

In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, love turns to catastrophe when it intersects with politics. Witness the doomed Montague and Capulet teenagers, the mad amour of Hamlet and Ophelia or the volcanic jealousy of Othello erupting all over Desdemona. It’s not hard to find the knife-edge of court intrigue pressed against the throat of romance in the Bard’s world.

Now, four centuries later, another Shakespeare—Nicholas (presumably no relation)—continues to mix the same volatile cocktail of passion and politics. In his previous novel, The Dancer Upstairs, a policeman falls for a ballet teacher who may be harboring an elusive Peruvian terrorist. Shakespeare skillfully navigated his way through Graham Greene territory with that gripping political thriller which was later made into a movie directed by John Malkovich.

In his newest book, Snowleg, Shakespeare returns with another story of disrupted romance set against the turbulence of politics. This time, he’s changed the scenery from South America to Cold War Germany, spanning twenty-five years in the lives of a man, a woman and the Berlin Wall that put them asunder.

Snowleg centers around Peter Hithersay, a bland student at a boys’ academy in 1977 who has always fancied himself an Arthurian hero—specifically, Bedevere who goes around rescuing damsels in distress. On his sixteenth birthday, Peter learns that his real father is not the “affable and diffident�€? Rodney he’s always known, but an East German political prisoner with whom his mother had a one-night stand. In less time than it takes to say “Ich bin ein Berliner,â€? Peter sets off for Germany, searching for clues that might lead him to the father he never knew.

In Leipzig his quest changes course when he crosses paths with a beautiful girl. In true Hollywood fashion, there’s a meet-cute when she asks him to examine her epiglottis on their first date (don’t worry, it all makes sense later in the book). As he’s looking down her throat, Peter finds himself tumbling head over heels for this girl with the long eyelashes and blackberry undercurrents in her hair. She tells him her grandmother’s nickname for her is “Snjolaugâ€? an Icelandic word which, to his Western ears, sounds like “Snowleg.â€?

Like his mother before him, Peter has a one-night stand. To him, Snowleg is “something fine and pure-bred and delicate with a natural haughtiness that didn’t know its own power.â€? When Snowleg begs him to help her escape beyond the Iron Curtain, his Arthurian impulse kicks into overdrive:

He recognized elements of himself in Bedevere, someone who was not a natural leader but who had pockets of this quality which allowed him to advance and retreat…(he) sometimes wished he might come across a dragon-threatened damsel so that he could display a courage which his surface hid.

He finds that lady in distress in Snowleg, but when it comes time for knightly courage, it sticks in his throat and he betrays her plans to escape to the West. Snowleg is hauled away and Peter returns to England, bitterly disappointed and feeling guilty about his failure. He spends the next thirty years—and the remainder of the book—trying to assuage his regret in a series of doomed relationships. He gets work as a doctor in reunified Germany, all the time keeping an eye out for the girl whose life he believes he ruined. Though Snowleg predictably disappears off the page for most of the book, she’s never far from Peter’s mind. Midway through the story, he vows, “At some stage in my life I’m by God going to find that girl and atone.â€?

Though perhaps too much of the book’s second half is given over to a mopey Peter sitting around regretting his romantic paralysis and the narrative likewise loses energy, there are some bright spots. Every so often, Shakespeare stops the breath in our throats with beautiful imagery: a sky has “the grey-white texture of freshly filleted cod,â€? a swan taking flight sounds like someone shaking out their raincoat, Snowleg walks down the aisle of a cathedral, “drawing all the light in the church to her face.â€?

Then, too, there are moments when Shakespeare loses control of his pen and we get sloppy sentences like when Peter’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend tells him, “There’s a Berlin Wall between your psyche and your intellect.â€? Puh-leeze. It’s as if Shakespeare knew we were bracing ourselves for a bad Wall metaphor and didn’t want to disappoint our expectation.

The novel moves at a cool, deliberate pace; nothing rushes the author (though sometimes we wish it would) as Peter’s life methodically unspools in a quest for identity and redemption. While Peter walks the bleak, snowy streets of Berlin in search of Snowleg, we’re already a few steps ahead of him. The story’s big revelation comes not with a surprising crash of cymbals but a soft “hmpf—saw that one coming a hundred pages away.â€? Just as in another Shakespeare’s work, the climax is a collision of coincidences.

What saves the book from total collapse is the way in which Shakespeare draw us into the lives of his characters and their personal and political quests. As the two Germanys reunite, we hope Peter will find his Snowleg and that all will be forgiven and healed. ( )