The Life of Objects
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012
In 1938, seventeen-year-old Beatrice, an Irish Protestant lace maker, finds herself at the center of a fairy tale when she is whisked away from her dreary life to join the Berlin household of Felix and Dorothea Metzenburg. Art collectors, and friends to the most fascinating men and women in Europe, the Metzenburgs introduce Beatrice to a world in which she finds more to desire than she ever imagined.
But Germany has launched its campaign of aggression across Europe, and, before long, the conflict reaches the Metzenburgs’ threshold. Retreating with Beatrice to their country estate, Felix and Dorothea do their best to preserve the traditions of the old world. But the realities of hunger and illness, as well as the even graver threats of Nazi terror, the deportation and murder of Jews, and the hordes of refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army begin to threaten their existence. When the Metzenburgs are forced to join a growing population of men and women in hiding, Beatrice, increasingly attached to the family and its unlikely wartime community, bears heartrending witness to the atrocities of the age and to the human capacity for strength in the face of irrevocable loss.
In searing physical and emotional detail, The Life of Objects illuminates Beatrice’s journey from childhood to womanhood, from naïveté to wisdom, as a continent collapses into darkness around her. It is Susanna Moore’s most powerful and haunting novel yet.
Order the Book:
-
“As war descends, nothing is obvious in this exquisitely written novel. “The Life of Objects” is a refined and sensual treat.”
Washington Post — September 2012
-
“[Moore] is a gorgeous stylist and a remarkable chronicler of human desire and confusion and understanding. I think her fiction uniquely combines tart, unflinchingly clear-eyed social observation, a kind of dreamy second sight, and deep compassion and wisdom.”
Bomb Magazine — October 2012
-
“Susanna Moore's latest novel, “The Life of Objects,” is a slim World War II saga that reads like a cautionary fairy tale: It's packed with descriptions of ornate furniture and paintings, lavish banquets, demons and diamonds. At the center of the story is a young girl bewitched by her own desire to live a larger life, a wish that's granted with grim exactitude.”
Interview on WEKU 88.9, NPR — September 2012
-
“Moore’s an extremely assured novelist, and her themes here ring out even if we’ve heard them before: War changes everyone, and nothing is promised to us forever, not even each other.”
Entertainment Weekly — September 2012
-
“The novel is a subtle and brilliant chronicle of a slow slide out of normalcy into deprivation and surrealism, and of a character’s transformation from a passive and dependent girl to a bold and independent adult. The writing is a miracle of clarity and beauty. It’s the kind of book I read and think, this is why I do this, and this is what I’ve come for.”
The Millions — October 2012
-
““The Life of Objects” engrosses by way of an artfully managed modesty of voice and a lace-maker’s eye for simple pattern made complex by repetition and variation — the restrained and recognizable obsessions of the story-teller’s psyche and the rhythm of her testimony.”
On The Seawall — October 2012