It’s the characters that stand out in Alice Austen’s new novel, 33 Place Brugmann, a subtle and complex story about the inhabitants of an apartment building in Brussels, Belgium, just before and during World War II. The Jewish family in apartment 4R acknowledge the signs of what's coming and take the decisive action of leaving for England. Their neighbors stay home to suffer the petty tyranny of the grocer Smets, who fiddles the rations. They endure the constant notetaking of the collaborator on the ground floor. Soldiers harass the young women on streets that are no longer being swept.
People change under the pressures of occupation. The debonair art dealer who escaped to England becomes an aficionado of Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate. The architect starts to brew beer in his pantry. The young art student takes a job in a uniform factory. War bends us all. Or does it? Austen seems to be saying the opposite. The claustrophobia of curfews and suspicions, the uncertainty and fear, and the constant hunger and deprivations whittle each individual down to his or her core self.
The inhabitants of 33 Place Brugmann act as their truest selves as the particulars of history catch up to them and a traitor threatens one of their own. The spinster in 3R does what the penny-pinching clichés that have replaced her heart tell her to do. The colonel in 3L and his dog Zipper follow the dictates of their own sense of duty. There’s only one person who might go either way.
A lesser writer would have pushed him along the lines of obvious tragedy, but Austen respects the character she’s written from a child to a man. He is quintessentially himself despite the lures and enticements set along his way. The story turns on what he chooses to do.
Nothing is clichéd about this war story except for the self-justifications the meddling spinster constantly mutters. This is not a story about Jews under Nazi occupation, although there are Jews in it. It’s not a story about collaborators or resisters, although both are involved. It’s a story about human beings, both ugly and admirable, and the fears, desires and love that motivate them.
Austen has thought deeply about the distressing parallels between 1939 and our own time. I’m going to heed her warning to take action now before it’s too late. Also, to be kind now, before I need help. But if we’re caught in hard times, I will study the personalities of those around me. At the quotidian level of ordinary citizens like me, history turns on character.
Megan Koreman lives in Petoskey, Michigan. She is a historian and author of The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-1946 and The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe. A young adult novel, Dark Clouds over Paris, is forthcoming. Read more at dutchparisblog.com.