Billiards at half-past nine, by Heinrich Böll

Revisiting a favorite book from Nobel-prize-winning Böll.  Written in 1962, this novel follows the fortunes of the Faehmel family for three generations.  It is set on a single day in September 1958, with flashbacks and multiple points of view. Grandfather Heinrich, a young architect in the early 1900s, wins a prestigious competition to erect a massive abbey outside of the city.  (This city is based on the author’s native Cologne, Germany, which was largely destroyed in WWII.)  His intent is to establish his own dynasty of children, grandchildren, and future generations.  But like many plans, things do not go as hoped. Losing two children early to disease and an older son to World War II (in which this son is a willing, in fact, enthusiastic participant), he is left with a remaining son, Robert, also an architect.   Robert, like his father, has an unvarying routine.  While Heinrich always breakfasts on the same thing at the same restaurant he went to when he first arrived, Robert spends an hour at the office signing documents, then disappears at 9:30 until 11 AM.  His secretary is under orders to not call him at a number he leaves unless he is wanted by his father, mother (who has been institutionalized for decades), his son or daughter, or mysterious fifth name.  But important looking person, billing himself as an old school friend, talks her into telling him where Robert is (she’s long ago looked up the number and it is a nearby hotel).  This sets in motion the events of the day, which is the patriarch’s 80^th birthday.  It was very interesting to read this at a distance of fifty years since the major theme of the book is postwar Germany guilt and the refurbishing of reputations that has led to former Nazis and sympathizers returning to power in the new order.  Aside from Otto, the son killed in WWII, the Faehmel family has largely opposed Nazism.  Robert escaped most of the war, but then was conscripted and actually ends up blowing up his father’s abbey for a crazed general with a passion for “field of fire” in the waning days of the war.  His son is now rebuilding it.  It helps to have a background in German history to fully appreciate this novel.  It was interesting to reread it in light of German’s current place in the world, which is not, I suspect, exactly what Böll would have anticipated.  304 pp.