"The Glimmer Palace": soapy history in pre-Hitler Berlin

"The Glimmer Palace"

by Beatrice Colin

Riverhead, 404 pp., $25.95

What kind of depraved, corrupted society could have produced — and supported — an Adolf Hitler?

That's the question that lingers behind Glasgow writer Beatrice Colin's uneven historical novel, "The Glimmer Palace," which revolves around an orphan who grew up to become one of Hitler's favorite actresses.

This entirely fictional heroine, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite, witnesses Germany at its worst before, during and after World War I, which she barely survives. At her most desperate, Lilly makes coffee from ground walnut shells, steals a rooster from a chicken farm and faces out-of-this-world inflation.

"For once," Lilly claims, "every girl's mantra rang true: she had nothing to wear." Family heirlooms, widow's pensions, a day's wages — they were all equally worthless.

Nothing was what it was advertised to be. Cocaine was really talcum powder, and vodka was cleaning fluid. "Close your eyes and swallow" became one kind of prayer. When Lilly tried the more conventional form, she failed to encounter "a successful response from God."

The book begins with Lilly being conceived at a turn-of-the-century movie theater (or "glimmer palace") that happens to be showing a Georges Méliès film. It ends with a cliffhanger of a finale in which the author rather self-indulgently embarrasses the Nazis.

This episode is no more convincing than the tricks the nuns play on the Nazis in "The Sound of Music," but Colin clearly has entertainment in mind, and she satisfies as long as you're not expecting more. Trouble is, she's researched the book so carefully that the soapier, sillier episodes seem artificial when compared to the real thing.

When Lilly's anti-Semitic best friend starts dating a thug and singing Hitler's praises, the dialogue seems especially strained. Much more powerful is an episode, based on fact, in which hungry Berliners turn into a mob and butcher a horse on the street.

Also adding to the book's veracity is Colin's account of the rise of German expressionism in the between-wars film industry. Lilly is witness to the birth of "The Golem," "Metropolis" and other nightmarish classics, and eventually she becomes part of this noirish film scene. By the end of "Glimmer Palace," you may even be tempted to believe that she had a screen presence equal to Garbo.