33 Place Brugmann is a place familiar to Alice, as she has stayed in the building and got to know some of the elderly residents who have lived there since before the war. However, in this novel of the same name she takes us back to 1939, to the residents she imagines living there and their life stories.
Initially, we are met by art student, Charlotte Sauvin. Her father is a prominent architect, knows everything and everyone who is involved in the building. He knows the sounds, the smells, the comings and goings. Among others who live in the building we also meet a Russian seamstress, a war time veteran and an art collector. The reality of forthcoming cataclysmic impact of Europe going to war and the Nazi occupations changes the future of some of the residents. Families like the Raphaels disappear in the night with no news on where or what may have happened to them. The perilous future has a drastic impact on the community with cruel choices having to be made which could therefore impact their own future.
The narrator in 33 Place Brugmann digs deep into the lives of this eclectic and courageous community with diverse viewpoints and perspectives. The story is compassionate but with a harsh reality of what it was like to live during World War II, where communities that used to be as one, now being destroyed and fragile. The building at 33 Place Brugmann plays an integral part as a character through Austen’s storytelling, which provides an atmospheric backdrop to everyday society. A captivating story.
Reviewed by Claire Stanley
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alice Austen won the John Cassavetes Award for her debut film Give Me Liberty (writer/producer). She is a past resident of the Royal Court Theatre and her internationally produced plays include Animal Farm, Water, Cherry Orchard Massacre, and Girls in the Boat. She studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney at Harvard, where she received her JD, after which she moved to Brussels and lived on Place Brugmann. Austen currently lives in Milwaukee.
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