Remote Sympathy: LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022: Catherine Chidgey

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Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. His life and that of his machine come to the attention of Dietrich Hahn, SS Sturmbanfuhrer, whose wife Greta has cancer. Sent to run Buchenwald from Munich, Hahn arranges for Weber to be sent to Buchenwald to treat his ailing wife with the machine, hoping to cure her so that they can be the perfect Aryan family. The villa is perfect, the scenery beautiful, the villagers complacent..... When Frau Hahn’s poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber, her naive ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged. A decade earlier, Dr Weber had invented a machine believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might save a life. Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide. So Greta’s cancer can be seen as: the tumour of the camp set in this historically cultural town; the cancer of in German society or the poisonous growth in that society and in the town’s inhabitants that leads to their cognitive dissonance about the horrors occurring what it is effectively their sponsorship of the Nazi regime.

Chidgey is a gifted writer, and in this, her confident, commanding prose and vivid atmospherics hold the attention.”—The Guardian (on The Transformation)A different perspective on the life surrounding and within the concentration camps, distressing at times to read but I found it interesting. Would make a good movie. Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific). In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times Book Review. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. Catherine has a degree in German literature and lived in Berlin for three years during the 1990s. She now lives in Ngāruawāhia, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. Sometimes, according to Dietrich Hahn, prisoners are released — “it’s good for morale.” Everything is riddled with lies. Camp wives other than Greta, it is said, live in bizarre luxury – one bathes in Madeira wine and plays with a solid gold chess set. Greta’s new friend Emmi tells her it’s an “Aladdin’s Cave — anything you want, you can have, made by the finest craftsmen.” Remote Sympathy is a uniquely told WWII historical fiction novel, mainly set in Buchenwold concentration camp.

As the prison population begins to rise, the job becomes ever more consuming. Corruption is rife at every level, the supplies are inadequate, and the sewerage system is under increasing strain. A decade earlier, Dr Weber had invented a machine: the Sympathetic Vitaliser. At the time he believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might yet save a life. Chidgey alternates between three main characters. Leonard Weber is a doctor of Jewish ancestry, inventor of the ‘Sympathetic Vitaliser’, an electrotherapeutic device he believes could cure – cure! – metastatic carcinoma. As he explains, if a singer can shatter glass when her voice reproduced its resonant frequency, ‘couldn’t we shatter a tumour in the same way? By causing its cells to vibrate in sympathy, couldn’t we turn it to dust?’ This astonishing book, with its inextricable braid of sadness and determination, is exactly what I needed. Chidgey . . . forces us to face and review our relations with humanity, head and heart on. This is exactly the book we need now.' —Paula Green, Kete

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Catherine Chidgey is a novelist and short story writer whose work has been published to international acclaim. In a Fishbone Church won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in her region. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was Time Out’s book of the year, a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. She has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the DUBLIN Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Axeman's Carnival won the Acorn at the New Zealand Book Awards - the country's biggest literary prize. Remote Sympathy is uniquely constructed as the reader witnesses the Holocaust mainly from the viewpoint of the Nazis. This makes it even more horrifying (if that is possible) as the Nazis believe what they are doing is acceptable.

A powerful and beautifully written story about how we try to excuse and justify our actions and how we can so easily bury our heads in the sand to what is happening just a short distance away from us. The way she weaves different characters and point of views is commendable. Not at one point did I feel confused or questioning why the shift in narration. Together, the different viewpoints come together to create a feeling of being watched. From every angle, this story is told, albeit from different perspectives, but everyone has something to say. And every opinion and viewpoint is just as horrifying as the last. When Frau Hahn is forced into an unlikely and poignant alliance with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr. Lenard Weber, her naïve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged. A decade earlier, Dr. Weber had invented a machine: the Sympathetic Vitaliser. At the time he believed that its subtle resonances might cure cancer. But does it really work? One way or another, it might yet save a life. Do you know,’ says Greta’s new friend Emmi, ‘they released some of the Polish child prisoners because they found out they had Aryan blood?’This serious effort to evoke the crucible of German fascism proves less effective at conveying emotional resonance. This is an intensely moving and poignant novel, about denial, grief, love, loss, and hope. The author even uses the population of the local town, as an extra viewpoint, who are happy to turn a blind eye to what is going on so close to them; while Anna blithely accepts the help of domestic Josef, without wishing to question why, exactly, he is there. With the prison compound literally within walking distance of her door, she is more concerned with what her young son may see, than with what her husband is doing. It is testament to Chidgey’s writing, that she manages to create such sympathetic characters – from bored, Nazi housewives, flirting with danger and disgrace, to officers turning to drink and gambling to blot out the reality of their work; even as they try to excuse their actions to themselves and those around them. I absolutely loved Catherine Chidgey's novel The Transformation, more so even than her infamous debut In a Fishbone Church, so I was looking forward to her latest long-awaited novel. There is no shying away from the uncomfortable truths of history in this novel. Although we do not spend that much time in the camp, it hangs over every chapter of this novel as a dark reminder of what happened. The horrors and unthinkable crimes are brought up again and again with the stark contrast of Greta's world versus Weber's being a main theme throughout.

Frau Hahn’s husband, SS Sturmbannführer Dietrich Hahn, has taken up a powerful new position as camp administrator. The job is all consuming as he wrestles with corruption that is rife at every level, inadequate supplies, and a sewerage system under ever-growing strain as the prison population continues to rise. You’re not me so you might not spend the whole pukapuka freaking out about the ways in which you personally have been colluding with white supremacy and what this might mean for the fate of our nation. But I would say this: even in the relief of our 2020 election result (assuming you are relieved), please don’t take our relative good fortune for granted. The reason that pakimaero about the Nazis are still being published in Aotearoa in 2020 is that we have not yet broken ties with them. They haunt our collective imagination because, as a colonial state, we share ideological whakapapa. Building a better future is going to take mahi from every single one of our civic-selves. I might get myself that trenchcoat after all.The looming presence of the nearby prison camp – lying just beyond a patch of forest – is the only blot to mar what is otherwise an idyllic life in Buchenwald. Her husband is desperate. Could this machine, trialled a decade earlier at the Holy Spirit Hospital, be the answer? Could this Dr Weber, his trace of Jewish ancestry aside, prolong his wife’s life? Greta Hahn’s husband Dietrich has become Buchenwald’s Chief Administrator and they move to a spacious house nearby. Greta trips through her days in her sunny new home surrounded by friendly neighbours, attended by Josef, a willing young servant recruited from the camp. When Frau Hahn is forced into an unlikely and poignant alliance with one of Buchenwald’s prisoners, Dr Lenard Weber, her naïve obtuseness about what is going on so close at hand around her is challenged.