For any­one who has ever lived in a large brown­stone build­ing, you know that there is some­thing inti­mate and mag­i­cal about the per­son­al­i­ties that live with­in its walls. You know your neigh­bors well, but also under­stand that there are secrets with­in their pri­vate abodes that you might nev­er know. In her book 33 Place Brug­mann, Alice Austen explores one such build­ing in Brus­sels in the peri­od span­ning the dawn and zenith of Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing WWII. Austen lived at that address many years after the events of the book take place, and she uses her inti­mate knowl­edge of the build­ing, along with her expan­sive imag­i­na­tion and thought­ful sto­ry­telling, to cre­ate a cast of char­ac­ters that might have lived with­in those walls. 

33 Place Brug­mann is a per­fect micro­cosm of the many per­son­al­i­ties that might have lived in Brus­sels in the peri­od before WWII. There is the Bel­gian Jew­ish fam­i­ly who lives in apart­ment 4R, the East­ern Euro­pean refugee in the fifth floor attic, the Colonel in 3L, the busy­body in 3R, and the Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er in 2R. Each char­ac­ter is rich­ly drawn; Austen does a won­der­ful job of rep­re­sent­ing each character’s dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties and thoughts in her first-per­son nar­ra­tive style. It should come as no sur­prise that Austen is a film­mak­er — this is her debut nov­el — as her scene cuts and changes of per­spec­tive feel almost cinematic. 

The emo­tion­al heart of the sto­ry sur­rounds two char­ac­ters, Char­lotte and Julian. Char­lotte is a col­or­blind art stu­dent who learns to paint. Julian is a Jew who flees the Nazis and ulti­mate­ly joins the Roy­al Air Force. Friends from child­hood, the two are some of Austen’s most res­o­nant nar­ra­tors, star-crossed lovers who nev­er quite find one another. 

33 Place Brug­mann shines in its ver­sa­til­i­ty of form. At times dream-like; at oth­er times philo­soph­i­cal, with many char­ac­ters’ opin­ing on archi­tec­ture or the writ­ings of British thinker Lud­wig Wittgen­stein; and still at oth­er times, read­ing like a thriller. The book con­stant­ly keeps read­ers on their toes. Read­ers will be drawn in as they con­sid­er the book’s cen­tral mys­tery: what has hap­pened to Julian’s family’s prodi­gious art col­lec­tion, and how will it remain out of Nazi hands?

33 Place Brug­mann stands out as a new nov­el about the Holo­caust, in that it edu­cates its read­er on the many respons­es to Nazi occu­pa­tion — human­iz­ing those that flee, fight, or col­lab­o­rate — and shows us just how inter­re­lat­ed and messy these sto­ries were. The build­ing at 33 Place Brug­mann becomes a micro­cosm of soci­ety in how it func­tioned dur­ing a time of trau­ma, the way that neigh­bors nego­ti­at­ed between their own needs, and the com­pet­ing dynam­ics of their neigh­bors in their ques­tion for survival.