Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
There surely shouldn’t be that many people who have not at one point walked between the pages of a Ben Elton novel and been enraptured by the ease in which the writing flows and captivates. From 1989s debut Stark to his new release Two Brothers his books have ridiculed the ridiculous, poured scorn on those worthy and all the time delivered some great books in the process.
Two Brothers is perhaps the author’s most personal and indeed most worthwhile book to date. By using the experiences of his family who like millions of others throughout the stupidity and insidiousness of the period between the two wars and during the most horrific era of European history, Ben Elton manages to convey the pity, despair, sheer terror and in some cases love, of what was happening in the dark days of Berlin and Germany.
What makes Ben Elton’s book so fascinating is the small pieces that he weaves throughout the tale of the socio-psychology of the city of Berlin in the lives of the Jewish family. The day that the two boys were born was irretrievably and forever linked to the birth of Germany’s problem child and how the three entities fared during their life span is one that will have readers with an interest in history certainty revelling in some of the information that Mr. Elton subtly deploys in random places to convey the many twists and turns of Berlin’s complex time between the wars.
The drama and intrigue of the post World War One defeat, through to the heady days of the jazz liberalism and finally the creeping violence against Berlin’s Jewish population, this is a book that keen amateur historians, loyal readers of Ben Elton and anyone with a conscious should read, if only to understand better that not everyone from that time and in that country was filled with hate or foolishness. Ben Elton has the gift of being able to make a powerful, compelling statement whilst the reader soaks up more than they ever bargained for.
His 13th novel shows that Ben Elton is still a master story-teller for all.
Ian D. Hall