The chapter on Sally Bowles clearly demonstrated how well the actor studied her part. Isherwood's classic story of Berlin in the 1930s - and the inspiration for Cabaret - now in a stand-alone edition. Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2020. From his landlady and the tenants who stay in their apartment, young wannabe socialites trying to make it big, and time spent on Ruegen Island with two male friends who's sexual desire causes conflict during their spell together, these individuals stories are told almost like confessions, where Isherwood himself is just lingering in the background listening a hell of a lot but with just the occasional comments made with a wry sense of humour and his prose has a distant style to it, meaning that even though you are intimate and close with those involved there is also a sense of detachment. Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 and kept detailed diaries, from which he created this novel. Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2014. A very enjoyable but sobering novel. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. One sees a young writer wrestling with himself, something I for one quite enjoy, and often the writing is wonderful. Set in the 1930s, Goodbye to Berlin, evokes the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. People tried to go on with life as usual, acclimating so slowly to their future under Hitler that they didn't recognize what they were surrendering. The Sally Bowles chapter is perhaps the most vivid, but I am unsure how much of that is due, as least for those who know the film Cabaret, to the writing and how much to Liza Minnelli’s charisma overflowing from the film: although the character in the book is English I have problems in hearing her dialogue in anything but Minnelli’s American voice. My 80th book of the year and my 9th book of October. I had mixed feelings about this book. The writer's autobiographical anecdotes are inspiring-- this is precisely what a foreigner writing in a strange land should write like. I saw the musical version "Cabaret" recently, had also seen the film with Liza Minelli and the play "I am a Camera". Stupid Melbourne weather. This was not quite what I expected and I wish I had ended up liking it more than I did. One of the small pleasures of growing older is that you can re-read your favourite books and, for the most part, they seem fresh and new; one fondly recalls the core story but generally forgets the local colour, the descriptions and prose styling. Goodbye to Berlin Quotes Showing 1-30 of 33 “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. SA Christopher Isherwood is well known for his collections of short stories about young people in Berlin … To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Isherwood shows the lives of people under threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer, a gay couple, Peter and Otto, and an English upper-class waif, the divinely decadent … He is mystified, he is the average onlooker, but he participates often and with polarizing results (even his sexual identity is a big ? Many of his guests are described as coming to talk to other guests, not to see him, which was sort of the way of Gatsby's parties, wasn't it? Please try again. . All memorable in their own ways. There is a basic chronological narrative underpinning Goodbye to Berlin, but rather than proceeding sequentially from 1930 to 1933, from the narrator’s arrival to his final departure, the novel is structured around Christopher’s various interactions with three particular individuals or groups of individuals, Sally Bowles, the Nowak family, and the Landauer family. 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