The Silence in Between, Josie Ferguson
Josie Ferguson’s acclaimed debut novel opens on 12th August 1961. Lisette has taken her sick baby Axel from East Berlin to a hospital in the West. She goes home to rest, intending to return the next day; however, overnight, she finds the borders have closed and a wall is being erected between East and West. Her adolescent daughter Elly determines to find a way to enter West Berlin and bring her brother home. Elly’s story unfolds alongside Lisette’s in the 1940s when traumatic wartime experiences robbed her of her dreams of becoming a musician and left her unable to express affection for her baby daughter.
Elly’s quest is compelling, not least her terrifying journey from East to West Berlin via the sewers. But the novel’s 1961 sections are the most effective in exploring how Berlin’s division and wartime past have affected its citizens. Elly reflects that ‘we’ve always had to be careful with our words in the East’ and observes how the bomb-damaged buildings remind East Berliners of ‘the need for us to be punished’. Arriving in West Berlin, she marvels that ‘there are no Stasi, just happy, free civilians’. Ultimately, though, her feelings for her family, and for the gentle Russian soldier Andrei, inspire her to prioritize love over freedom.
The novel’s 1940s sections cover some familiar ground, especially in Lisette’s attempts to fend off an unprepossessing Nazi suitor. Nevertheless, there are some very powerful episodes: when Lisette is forced to become the mistress of a tyrannical Russian general; when a younger Russian soldier briefly shows her kindness; or when she meditates on how her inaction has made her complicit in Nazi atrocities.
Some themes in The Silence in Between feel slightly underdeveloped. It would have been good, especially, to learn more about Lisette and Elly’s shared musical gift, which leads Elly to perceive people’s personalities as though they were pieces of music. Overall, though, this is an absorbing account of the effects of war and totalitarianism on ordinary civilians and a moving reminder that love, compassion and courage can flourish even in tyrannical regimes.
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