Stephens Gerard Malone’s I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin reflects a shifting approach by Canadian writers to the country’s relationship to war. The books that set the stage for it—although they approach the link between European history and a Canadian point of view differently—include Timothy Findley’s The Wars and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. In those groundbreaking novels, a Canadian leaves youth and a stable future behind in order to gain the kind of difficult knowledge available in Europe during wartime. Malone’s strategy is similar at the outset, as we meet his main character, Michael Renner, in 1932, while he muses about childish things on a Nova Scotia shoreline. “In Michael’s twenty-five years,” Malone tells us, “he’d only once tried to spend a night away from home.” In quick order he is packed off to Berlin to help his paternal grandmother cope with a recent stroke.
Ever the innocent abroad, Michael is initiated into...
Norman Ravvin’s recent novel is The Joyful Child (Gaspereau Press, 2011). Previous books include a story collection, Sex, Skyscrapers and Standard Yiddish (Paperplates Books, 1997), and a volume of essays entitled A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). He lives in Montreal.
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