In The Presence Of Mine Enemies (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
This book seemed interesting. It wasn't. It had incredibly long passages of intricately detailed bridge games. (Yes, bridge games. And not "high stakes bridge" or anything like that. The book wasn't set at a bridge tournament. It was just two main characters and their wives getting together to play bridge. And, boy howdy!, did they play bridge. For instance:Willi dealt the first hand. "And now to give myself thirteen diamonds," he said grandly."As long as you give me thirteen hearts, I don't mind," Heinrich said.Reality returned as soon as he picked up his hand, which showed the usual mixture of suits and ten points. Willi opened with a club. Heinrich passed. Erika said, "Two clubs," which meant she had some support for Willi but not a great deal. He took it to three, after which everybody passed. And he made three clubs with no overtricks but without much trouble."A leg," he said as Erika wrote their sixty points under the line.Heinrich gathered up the cards and started shuffling. "The only thing legs are good for is getting chopped off," he observed. He dealt out the next hand and opened with a spade. After a lively action, he and Lise got to four spades. Willi doubled. If they made it, they would take the game and wipe out the Dorsches' partial score. If they went down, it would get expensive above the line.Erika led a heart; Willi had been bidding them. When Lise laid out the dummy, Heinrich got an unpleasant surprise. He had the ace, queen, ten, and nine of spades, plus a little one. His wife had four little spades to the eight. That left the king and jack conspicuously missing, along with two little ones to protect them. Considering the other problems he had in the hand, it also left him in trouble.Willi took the trick with the king of hearts, then led the ace. When that went through without getting trumped, he grinned at Heinrich and said, "Got you.""Maybe." Heinrich shrugged. He thought Willi had him, too, but he was damned if he'd admit it."No maybes about it." Willi led a diamond. That wasn't the way to finish Heinrich off. He had the ace in his hand, while the king was on the board. He decided he would rather be in the dummy, so he took the trick with the king. Then he led a small spade from the dummy. Willi played another one. Heinrich hesitated, but only for a moment. He set down the ten. Behind the cards of the dummy, Lise blinked.He felt like shouting when Erika sluffed a club. That meant Willi had all the opposition's spades. No wonder he'd doubled. But it also meant... Happily, Heinrich said, "I'm going to finesse you right out of your shoes." (296-7)And the point of all that? To show that Willi and Erika are having marital problems. Every chapter contained four pages of bridge playing, just so you could see how poorly Willi and Erika got along. Also, every chapter contained a scene where a woman who worked for a doctor tries to stop him from messing with the coffeemaker because he doesn't know how to use it. There's no point, there. The woman is a minor character and the doctor even more so. Both could be cut from the book with very, very few changes.Also, as the book progressed it became more and more of a fictionalization of the fall of the Soviet Union. I expected some imagination, but all he did was give new names to Gorbachev (Buckliger) and Yeltsin (Stolle), then move the action to Berlin and, bam!, you've got a novel.I can't finish without including this sentence, which is possibly the dumbest sentence I've ever read. "His hair stuck out from under his cap in all directions, like the hay in a stack made by somebody who didn't know how to stack hay" (218). What the hell?! He had to have been trying to give his editor the mickey, but she didn't realize it and now the dumbest sentence of all time is in print.
So what's that all about? First and foremost, a deeply naïve and unrealistic idea -Jews not only surviving decades of Nazism right at the heart of the Third Reich but, even holding important posts, from crucial worker at the OKW to academics in prestigious universities and high ranking public servants at the top levels of the State. Even more unbelievable: children are entrusted by their whole families to help assure such survival!Well, that's a shaky foundation to a whole novel but it manages to get worst as, the naivety of it is only matched by its appalling Manichaeism -Germans are bad, Jews are good and, period. I am not even caricaturing! From brutish and brainwashed teachers to promiscuous women, from slow and messy pupils to ignorant and annoying students, Germans come across as being cruel, nasty, stupid, hypocrites, ignorant, revengeful and all in all a mediocre kind of people (gosh! none of them seem to even know how to make a coffee!) while, on the other hand, Jews are exactly the opposite: not even ten years old kids are able to see through propaganda, a university lecturer or a computer programmer are not only brilliant but the best among their peers and, even as married couple, Jews are more decent and loyal when arguing with each other! Gross? Plainly. In fact, consciously or not, the whole novel is loaded with such scenes drawing simplistic and ridiculous contrasts that would be laughable if Turtledove was not here ambitious. Because, sadly he is and it shows for example in his annoying descriptions of bridge games (yes, bridge games) feeding the story. Well, of course, we can guess what he is getting at (bridge as a metaphor to life under dictatorship) but, considering its naivety, appalling Manichaeism and, all in all blatant lack of depth and bad understanding and handling of human psychology in extreme circumstances, Turtledove's ambition just fall flat with a big crash. A terrible miss and, to top it all, it's long, but loooong, if not for the want of knowing what it will all leads to (an even more improbable turn of events, as it is) terribly boring and annoying. A very bad book.
What do You think about In The Presence Of Mine Enemies (2004)?
An interesting 'Alternate History' novel. Well written with engaging characters. Plot: Jews that survived the Nazi Holocaust are still surviving today in the 3rd Reich. Of course under the identity of perfect Aryans. They need to be extremely careful with everything they do or say in their lifes, or they run the chance of being killed by the SS. The politics in the background tell the story of the 4th Reich in motion, with a new "Führer" who wants to pass more rights to the people.The story reminded me of the final days of Communism under Gorbachev, which it probably intended to remind me of. I give it 3 stars because it really entertained me. There were a few things that bothered me though, which lost the book the 4th star:endless repetition of internal thoughts of the jewish main charachters. Of course an important point, but repeated too often - didn't like the "subtle" hints to real life characters (Kurt Haldweim - Kurt Waldheim : Bavarian Gauleiter Strauss - Franz Josef Strauss; Odilo Globocnic - same (although born in 1904, couldn't possibly play a role in 2010), and a few more). And can anyone answer me this question: did the Gimpels really play Bridge again with the Dorsches like nothing happened? I wasn't sure about this....
—Marcel Dekker
One of the best Turtledove alternative histories. This one depends on no sci-fi changes, aliens, or other weird happenstance. Germany won WWII many years ago, getting the atom bomb first as a neutral US stays home. Years later they defeat the US in WWIII. Now Germany and Japan are the dominant powers in the world. Jews are believed to be mostly wiped out but small groups exist, even in Berlin, pretending to be loyal Germans, working for government agencies, colleges, and other such jobs. Now, reform has reared it's head in Germany amongst the NAZI party itself and a new Fuhrer supports it. But others don't want such changes. What's a Jewish family to do but keep it's head down and wait to see what happens? Sometimes, that's not possible.
—John
Imagine Germany won the second world war and yet another world war followed. Unlike today the whole (or majority) of the developed world is controlled from Berlin. Jews remain persona non-grata and are believed wiped out by most of the berliners. add a new regime that suggests past mistakes should be rectified. arrests, uprising the SS against the wermacht and you have an inkling of what this book is about. You simply cannot imagine what happens in a 2 year period in the germany of the 21st century and thank God it is not factual.Why tell a child that you are part of a marginalised community? There are so many important truths in here such as knowledge can both make and destroy a personThis is the best book i have read in a long time
—Marie
