Stephanie Jones: Book Review - The Other Me by Saskia Sarginson

What do you do if you suspect your father of having been a Nazi? It may not be the freshest premise but it’s spun out convincingly by Saskia Sarginson in her captivating third novel, The Other Me. Klaudia Meyer is the sole offspring of Otto, an overbearing, rather brutish ex-soldier, and Gwyn, a mild-mannered Welsh woman who seems to be the only person for whom Otto feels any warmth or regard.

Home-schooled by her mother according to principles laid out by her devout Methodist father, Klaudia’s first experience of formal education comes when she enters high school, where Otto is the caretaker and the butt of jokes and harassment from students suspicious about his wartime activities. Their disdain of Otto extends to his daughter, and Klaudia is subjected to a mix of bullying and ostracism. She hides her misery from her mother, who she perceives to be somehow more vulnerable than she.

There is nothing light or charming about this story: Klaudia’s agonies are too real and immediate to allow for levity. Without a sanctuary and unable to draw answers from her parents that assuage her mounting concerns – and after all, swastika-marked medals tucked away in a bedroom drawer will make a girl wonder – she flees at the first opportunity, moving from London to Leeds to study dance. There, she seizes the opportunity to remake and rename herself, morphing into the ultra-English Eliza Austen and striking up a close friendship with a fellow student and a relationship with the grandson of a Dutch Jew who survived the Holocaust.

On later returning to her childhood home Klaudia feels unable to breathe, and the sense of oppression, of stifled enclosed space in a home where no truth is spoken and Christ is used as both sword and shield, spreads to the reader. Otto hovers, an enigmatic presence, but is he menacing or simply lost? It is to Sarginson’s credit that she doesn’t scatter explanations in her narrative’s wake but asks the reader to work to prise apart the characters and assess their innermost motivations.

The novel’s most compelling plotline, in addition to Klaudia’s conflict over her twin identities and efforts to preserve her new relationships, is that of Otto and his older brother Ernst, abandoned children who were taken in by the Meyer farming family but shown little comfort, forced to sleep over the stables and wait for the scraps left behind from the family’s meals. As war approaches, they are rounded up to join German Youth before graduating, at age 14, to Hitler Youth, and then the big leagues.

Ernst has spent his life holding his secrets close and protecting those he loves, even from a distance. His remoteness, and the tentative manner in which he ultimately reconnects with his family, are among the most affecting elements of a novel that has its share of human misery.

Sarginson skillfully shows how easily the German military machine scooped up the young and how, in the final analysis, the task of assigning responsibility and blame is futile. There are the dead and the living, and the suspicions of those who follow after. In The Other Me, the story of a young woman who comes to recognize how many personas can fit within a single life span, a good life demands much more than mere survival.