A picture book about Nazi persecution, air raids and Communist secret police informants seems an unlikely children’s bedtime story.
But The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding is also about belonging.
Adapted from his best-selling memoir of the same name, Harding tells the tale of a house in the forested outskirts of Berlin and the four families — who were Jews, Nazis, refugees and Communists — that lived in it from 1927 to 1999. It’s the story of a house that’s stood in four different Germanys: The Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, Communist East Germany and today’s reunified Germany. Enlarge this image
The House by the Lake: The True Story of a House, Its History, and the Four Families Who Made It Home, by Thomas Harding. Illustrated by Britta TeckentrupCandlewick Studio
Following in a rich children’s literary tradition of bringing inanimate objects to life, Harding makes the house his protagonist. “People come and go from the story, but the house remains,” Harding tells NPR, explaining that “the house is a witness, situated on the front lines of 20th century German history.” It protects as families seek refuge within it, before having to flee again. It watches as its beautiful lakeside garden is torn apart by soldiers to make way for the Berlin Wall.
Like many other buildings in and around the German capital, the house is more than a sum of its four walls. The layers of wallpaper and scratches on the floorboards are the traces of its previous occupants. As the protagonist, Harding’s house literally holds memories: “The walls and the floors and the windows and the doors remembered the kind doctor and his cheery wife,” he writes.
