The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

Synopsis: The debauched celebration of the cabaret era. The magical ascent of cinema. The deprivations of World War I and the build up to World War II. Set against the rise and fall of Berlin and the innovations in art that accompanied it, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite brilliantly weaves together the story of orphan girl Lilly Nelly Aphrodite's remarkable journey from poverty to film stardom.

Review: Overall I quite enjoyed listening to this, though I struggled with it at times. It is relentlessly bleak. I really liked the young orphan Lilly (or Tiny Lill as she is called to begin with), after an ill-fated beginning (her real parents are irresponsible and her adoptive parents find that she cannot, after all, replace their own dead daughter.) Tiny Lil is sent to an orphanage to live amongst the nuns. Despite being eager to please, she finds it hard to settle and is often in trouble with the nuns for bad behaviour. She's a great mix of vulnerability and high spirits, and, at the beginning of her time at the orphanage, spends most days sitting in a chair in silence, or eating meals alone as punishment. She has an overwhelming desire to be loved and to love, she adores and idolises Sister August but is often in trouble with her, Sister August advises her to look to God for guidance and comfort.

'Sometimes Tiny Lil looked for God. She explored every inch of the orphanage, from the spaces between the eaves in the attic to a secret cupboard behind the coal bunker in the basement, for evidence of his presence that she could offer to Sister August. And yet she never found anything, nothing but dead spiders and single socks, balls of dust and small locked suitcases that former inhabitants had forgotten'

Another person she comes to love is Hanne, who has recently come to the orphanage with her brothers. The friendship between Hanne and Lilly lasts for the entire book which is fairly surprising as Hanne would test the loyalty of a saint. Desperate to earn money in order that she and her brothers can escape to a better life, Hanne is soon encouraging Tiny Lil to climb over the orphange wall and accompany her to sell roses, filched from the nun's garden, to men at the 'tingle-tangle's'. Needless to say this leads to trouble.

The adult Lilly didn't quite live up to my expectations, she just didn't seem to come alive for me. Some of the books minor characters seemed to be more well-drawn. For a book so detailed in many respects, I didn't feel that enough detail was given to this stage of her life, she lost most of her feistiness and became quite downtrodden which was understandable given the circumstances but made for dreary reading (or listening in this case) and I couldn't quite believe in her eventual movie stardom. Her life was one long series of unfortunate events, she often found love, or was on the brink of love, only to have it snatched away. Hanne fared worse, being a 'good time girl' for want of a better phrase (though she hardly ever had a good time) and perennially picking up with what can only be described as the 'wrong sort'. Her character though had more spark and bite. Having said that I did become very fond of Lilly and constantly hoped that she would find the love she craved.

The real star of the piece is Berlin itself, gloriously described in detail, evoking all the seediness of the cabaret nightlife, the poverty and hardships of it's people during the period between the two world wars and the fear for some, and passion of others, evoked by the rise of the Third Reich.