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Summary
Summary
A celebration of cabaret in Berlin and the birth of cinema, set against the rise and fall of Germany between World War I and World War II
As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. The illegitimate, soon orphaned daughter of a cabaret performer, she lands at a Catholic orphanage where she finds refuge and the first in a string of friendships that will change the direction of her life. When fellow orphan Hanne takes Lilly beyond their stone confines, introducing her to the seedy glamour of Berlin's notorious nightlife, it begins for Lillly a trajectory of reinvention. From urchin to maid, teenage war bride, tingle-tangle bargirl, model, and script typist, Lilly is eventually transformed into one of Germany's leading film stars and a partner in a remarkable love story that will span decades and continents--and be inextricable from the history unfolding around it.
Gripping, seductive, and masterfully written, The Glimmer Palace is a page-turning story of glitter and splendor, drama and love, friendship and identity. The story of an extraordinary heroine living in an extraordinary time, it is vivid and surprising in its telling, intelligent and ambitious in its scope, sad and beautiful and unforgettable.
Author Notes
Beatrice Colin was born in London and raised in Scotland. She has worked as a freelance journalist, writing for publications including The Guardian , and as a playwright, writing radio plays for the BBC. She lives in Glasgow.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Born in Germany on December 31, 1899, Lilly Aphrodite is orphaned almost immediately: her lonely and tragic struggle for connection and survival drives Colin's haunting debut and offers an intriguing look at the early 20th-century German film industry. Soon after the orphanage where Lilly spends her early years closes, she goes to Berlin to live with Hanne, an independent and fearless teenage girl who works in a bar and subsists on men's handouts. As life in WWI Germany becomes increasingly bleak, Lilly must cope with Hanne's sudden departures, find work, fend off troublesome men and unwelcome women, and make love (when she finds it) last when each day more soldiers are sent off to war. The out-of-nowhere growth of the German silent film business is charted along with Lilly's progress as a budding star, but she's drawn more to Russian exile Ilya Yurasov, who directs her, than to her increasing fame. With the rise of the Nazi Party comes a drain of cultural talent, and Lilly (now Lidi), must choose among several paths open to her. This grim and sorrowful novel will captivate readers as it recreates Germany's cinematic revolution and the country's subsequent tragic course through history. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In this engrossing, romantic historical novel, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite is raised in a Catholic orphanage, and her ensuing journey of self-invention is set against the backdrop of Berlin's fluctuating fortunes from the early part of the twentieth century to the era of Dachau and Treblinka. Colin depicts World War I, sleazy cabarets, massive unemployment, the Nazi empire, and the even more savage horrors of World War II, all navigated by a strong, determined heroine. Lilly rises from impoverished anonymity to ride the wave of stardom in the new and popular cinema. None less than Joseph Goebbels masterminds the Nazi-produced Queen of Sorrows, whose premier is attended by Hitler himself, but the lovely star soon vanishes in every sense imaginable, driven by her love for the Russian Ilya Yurasov. After a painful separation and an elaborate plan for escape, their love and suffering reflect the lives of millions when the drums of war reverberate, human relationships go up in smoke, and all that is left of love and its past is a single frame from an unseen movie.--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2008 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
This novel imagines the life of a troubled actress in 1930s Germany. THE movies have provided escapism for so long that we tend to forget that the actors onscreen are themselves often trying to escape. For the orphaned Lilly Nelly Aphrodite, the heroine of Beatrice Colin's new novel, "The Glimmer Palace," "the only reality she could grasp was the reality of the film set. Only here could she make sense of who she was, what she was feeling and why; only here could she follow a script." Lilly's beauty, especially her "large gray eyes" that "could reveal everything, or nothing," lets her discard her past and, in front of the camera, fashion a more bearable identity. "The Glimmer Palace" opens at the turn of the 20th century and closes as Hitler prepares to start World War II. Colin, the British author of two previous novels, frames Lilly's story with scenes from the larger history of the German film industry, at its height in the 1920s. She wedges self-contained, fictionalized vignettes between chapters, deftly capturing the era's sense of frenzied invention and seductive promise. Born on New Year's Eve in 1899, Lilly is the incarnation of this toxic mix of glitter and despair. Over the course of nearly half a century, as troops parade through Berlin and bread lines erupt into riots, she is transformed, almost accidentally, from Tiny Lil, the unwanted baby, to Lidi, one of Germany's most celebrated film stars. Lilly's rise is counterbalanced by the downward trajectory of Hanne Schmidt, a fellow orphan she befriends while selling roses in cabarets. Hanne has a desperate yearning for stardom, but in place of pulchritude she can offer only tired eyes and a chipped front tooth. After years of selling her body - as an exotic dancer, as a prostitute, as a star of "sexual health" films - she confronts Lilly with the tragically unanswerable question: "Why you and not me?" By imbuing her work with a strikingly female perspective, Colin distinguishes her story from the best-known treatment of the Weimar Republic and the cabaret era, that of Christopher Isherwood's essentially autobiographical Berlin stories (even with Sally Bowles). Colin often writes with a supple, whimsical charm: "A young girl went to a party and swapped her clothes for a twist of cocaine. The man she ended up with had just sold his grandmother's pearls for a quart of cheap vodka. The cocaine was talcum powder; the vodka was cleaning fluid." But what can appear artful frequently devolves into artificiality - when, say, the narration recounts key events in terse summations. In just a few pages, couples meet, fall in love and marry; Lilly finds fame in mere paragraphs. As the story unfolds, this technique begins to feel like a cop-out, as if Colin simply lacked the skill to tell her story. Colin further abdicates narrative authority by covering Lilly's story with a documentary veneer, which can make her portrait of the actress seem distant and impersonal. Too often, Lilly mouths pieties. "America saved me," she tells The Hollywood Reporter in 1932. "It is my home now." Elsewhere, Colin's writing simply sags. "It was in her eyes; it was in his cut," we are told of the love between Lilly and a director. "It was in every single frame of every single scene she appeared in." Still, "The Glimmer Palace" can be absorbing in its grim authenticity. Even at the height of her fame, Lilly is despondent, realizing that the escapist existence she has sought so intently will never truly satisfy her. With alcohol, hashish and cocaine coursing through her, she can only wonder "if there had been a point when she had inadvertently chosen her glorious life onscreen over her real destiny." Mike Peed is on the editorial staff of The New Yorker.
Kirkus Review
While Germany falls apart, a determined girl with a dark past becomes a screen goddess, in the British author's intelligent if lengthy latest novel (Disappearing Act, 2002, etc.). Orphaned Lilly Nelly Aphrodite is destined for fame, but her route will be circuitous, eventful and unhappy. A neglected, rebellious infant, she spends her early years in a bleak orphanage, is impregnated by her first employer, undergoes an abortion, nearly starves during World War I and marries a beautiful soldier who is then declared missing in action. What sustains Lilly are her lifelong friendship with fellow orphan Hanne and her resolute spirit. As the war ends and Berlin begins its slide into political chaos, Lilly gets a typing job at the Deutsche Bioscop studio, then finds herself acting in a film under the direction of Russian Ilya Yurasov, with whom she falls in love. A natural on the screen, Lilly is soon a star, but shadows are gathering in the form of Ilya's long-lost fianc Katya; Lilly's husband (not dead after all, but disfigured); and of course the Nazis. Colin's tale of friendship, fate and fascism begins with an irreverent, quirky tone but soon turns more brooding. Happy endings are few. The freshness fades as the drawn-out, downbeat story traverses familiar terrain to reach its doomed conclusion. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Lilly Nelly Aphrodite takes her first breath in Berlin as the 20th century dawns and keeps right on going until she is Germany's top silent film star. With a reading group guide. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
