THE RECENT EAST

A broken family makes an uncomfortable transition into former Communist Germany in this moody debut novel.

Grattan’s family drama centers on three characters: Beate Haas, who as a girl escaped from East Germany with her parents in 1968, and the two children she later had in the United States, Adela and Michael. In 1990, with the Berlin Wall collapsed, Beate inherits her family home in Kritzhagen, a small town in the former East. Adela and Michael, 12 and 13 at the time, uneasily adjust to a place that “had gone from prom queen to old maid in a single season”: Michael keeps busy looting abandoned houses while furtively exploring relationships with men while Adela lends support to the demonized occupants of a nearby refugee camp. Beate, meanwhile, despondent after splitting with her husband, wanders the streets at night, eventually stumbling into a job cutting hair at a bar. In the early going, the book feels like a gothic novel with a Brutalist severity: The characters are so downcast and the home so haunted by the past that emotional escape seems impossible. But when the narrative leaps back into the 1970s and forward to the 21st century, the novel brightens as the characters’ motivations and experiences deepen. Michael settles into a job running a bar with a Stasi theme, Beate pursues new relationships, and Adela leaves the country just as her mom did. In the meantime, cousins and lovers provide emotional support while neofascism and homophobia buffet the family emotionally and physically. Grattan is a graceful writer and keen observer of family dynamics; the domestic themes, realist style, and emphasis on German culture can’t help but recall Jonathan Franzen. But the energy Grattan expends on characterization doesn’t quite extend to the plot, which feels shapeless despite some dramatic flare-ups. The lassitude is somewhat intentional, though: When you’re as disoriented as this clan is, Grattan suggests, there truly is no place like home.

An ambitious, artful, and winding tale of a family in search of its moorings.