The House by the Lake is an epic, fact-filled, multivoiced saga told with pace, verve and warmth, and rich in fascinating revelations ... through rigorous research, sleuth work and a range of interviews with key players he shows how one house stayed standing throughout a world war and the Cold War. He regales us with murder, espionage, de-Nazification trials and simple family drama, and at the end of his masterful tale we understand more about Germany’s difficult past and appreciate what makes a house a home.
The House by the Lake meticulously chronicles two linked feats of reclamation: the author’s reconstruction of the house’s life and times and his quest to restore the building itself ... The principal achievement of The House by the Lake is Harding’s portrayal of the ordinary lives, loves, and foibles of the people who passed through the house. He manages to show, too, how historical currents carried them along.
...[a] treasure trove of detail, narrated with a calm dignity ... It is Harding’s great achievement that he has painted a large canvas of history, but done so with glinting individual stories. He has persevered in listening to those 'quiet voices.'
In his absorbing personal history, Harding recounts, with a measured pathos, the experiences of a succession of tenants. It is a story of aspiration, fleeting joy, escape and the small-scale dramas of domestic life ... Harding makes excellent use of eyewitness testimony, interviews with Gross Glienicke villagers, family papers, government archives and other documents, as he moves across a century of time ... The occupants of the lake house were not big historical players. But their story, however modest, even at times banal, is well worth the telling.
The House by the Lake skips between its varied occupants and these events to present an admirably clear and concise history of modern Germany. It’s an impressive feat of archival and investigative research. Fascinating revelations abound ... Yet for all its detailed digging, the emotional side of the family’s loss remains submerged. Mr Harding is more comfortable with facts; with classic English reticence, he buries his family’s responses in footnotes and summaries. A greater willingness to explore the pain of this historic theft would have made this powerful book even more so.
The House by the Lake is an extraordinary book. The prose isn’t elegant, but it does not need to be since the story is so rich ... Harding has extracted the past from the dust that collects between floorboards and from layers of peeling wallpaper.
