What is Bryn Turnbull reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Bryn Turnbull, author of The Berlin Apartment: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Despite my enduring love for history, I find that my reading interests these days tend increasingly towards contemporary fiction: character studies of so-called ordinary people, living so-called ordinary lives. I'm not entirely sure what's driving the shift. Perhaps it's because I've lived so long in the past -- after four novels set between 1910 and 1960, the early 20th century feels quite domestic. Perhaps, too, it's the realization that I've reached the age and stage where the early days of my lifetime are officially historical fiction fodder: apparently, anything older than 30 years is fair game for historical fiction novelists, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that, definitionally.

My newest novel is also my youngest: set in Cold War East and West Germany, The Berlin Apartment follows a twenty-something couple separated by the Berlin Wall, who hatch a plan to smuggle Lise, our East German heroine, west. Not to put too fine a point on things, but it didn't escape my notice that my historical novel fishtails neatly with my own story: it came down a year and four months after I came squalling into the world. Historical indeed.

So: contemporary fiction. A few weeks back, I picked up David Nicholls's most recent novel, You Are Here: a really lovely story that hits slightly too close to home about a young-ish (okay, young middle aged) pair of unlikely romantic leads, flung together on a weekend jaunt over England's rolling hills. It's...[read on]

About The Berlin Apartment, from the publisher:

For fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah, this sweeping love story follows a young couple whose lives are irrevocably changed when they’re separated overnight by the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin 1961: When Uli Neumann proposes to Lise Bauer, she has every reason to accept. He offers her love, respect, and a life beyond the strict bounds of the East German society in which she was raised — which she longs to leave more than anything. But only two short days after their engagement, Lise and Uli are torn violently apart when barbed wire is rolled across Berlin, splitting the city into two hostile halves: capitalist West Berlin, an island of western influence isolated far beyond the iron curtain; and the socialist East, a country determined to control its citizens by any means necessary.

Soon, Uli and his friends in West Berlin hatch a plan to get Lise and her unborn child out of East Germany, but as distance and suspicion bleed into their lives and as weeks turn to months, how long can true love survive in the divided city?

Visit Bryn Turnbull's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Paris Deception.

The Page 69 Test: The Paris Deception.

Q&A with Bryn Turnbull.

My Book, The Movie: The Berlin Apartment.

The Page 69 Test: The Berlin Apartment.

Writers Read: Bryn Turnbull.

--Marshal Zeringue