The House of One Thousand Eyes

Description:

Who can Lena trust to help her find out the truth?

Life in East Germany in the early 1980s is not easy for most people, but for Lena, it’s particularly hard. After the death of her parents in a factory explosion and time spent in a psychiatric hospital recovering from the trauma, she is sent to live with her stern aunt, a devoted member of the ruling Communist Party. Visits with her beloved Uncle Erich, a best-selling author, are her only respite. 

But one night, her uncle disappears without a trace. Gone also are all his belongings, his books, and even his birth records. Lena is desperate to know what happened to him, but it’s as if he never existed. 


The worst thing, however, is that she cannot discuss her uncle or her attempts to find him with anyone, not even her best friends. There are government spies everywhere. But Lena is unafraid and refuses to give up her search, regardless of the consequences.  

My Thoughts:

About two years before the Tiannamen Square massacre in Beijing, I was a dorm advisor for an early college program in China Studies at the University of Hawaii. This was my evening job after they came back from dinner as well as my all day job when we brought the 20 of them to Beijing. 

Although I was just two years older than them, the fear and realization that we were not in America or any democratic country was quickly made clear to me when I  had to "rescue" one of my students that was stuck in the back room of a scroll shop and noticed that there was someone following us not just that day, but pretty much throughout the whole trip. My students were very naive about living in a highly oppressive, militaristic pseudo Communist country. So was I. If I knew that two years later, in the same square where we posed for pictures before viewing Chairman Mao's preserved body the People's Liberation Army would gun down over 10,000 student activists, I would have begged the organizers to take us home early or drop us off in Japan. 

Like Lena learning that she was being watched and recorded, my students were just furious when they came back to the hotel to find that all of their bags were searched, their music on their devices were played and their snacks were opened. They also tried to mess with the employee stationed in the hallway who was to write down the time that we came in or left our rooms by opening the door, walking one or two steps and going back in. Although to American teenagers, this is just harmless pranks, as the "adult" in charge, I tried to instill the right amount of fear in them, unsuccessfully. I was dealing with American kids growing up in a world where freedom is a right, social justice is a goal, and "Big Brother" is an allusion from a very old book. 

On the other hand, she also seems savvy about knowing how to "play the game" in order to survive and get the answers she wants. 

What surprised me the most about the character Lena was her fierce loyalty to her aunt even when her aunt wanted Lena to protect herself. This is the part of Lena that, while perhaps most realistic* to the time and events, seems the most tragic and foreign to me. I finished the book feeling disturbed and confused, but that is not always a bad thing. 

Lena is that kind of curious, independent character that seems very "American" in her naivete and her adamant expectation that social justice will be done. There is an innocent optimism in being young, whether a person or a country. 


A digital copy provided by Net Galley and the publisher for an honest review.

*Although this novel was researched, and the author explains what is historic, the characters are fictional.