Reviewed by Colleen McLennan
Alice Austen is an American writer, playwright, screenwriter and producer. She was a student at the University of Oregon and was a member of the women’s track team. She studied at Harvard Law School and was the co-founder of the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney. She wrote and produced the critically acclaimed 2019 film Give Me Liberty. 33 Place Brugmann is her debut novel.
This is the story of the residents of a building in Brussels, Belgium, leading up to and during the occupation by the Nazis in the Second World War. The building consisted of five floors, housing people from different backgrounds with different professions and skills, and different dreams. It was a time of fear and intimidation, of ethnic cruelty and profound loss.
The building housed a caretaker and family, an attorney and family, a former café owner and renowned gossip, an elderly colonel from the Belgian Armed Forces and daughter, a Jewish fine art dealer and family, an architect and daughter, and, living in the 5th floor maid’s room, a refugee seamstress.
From the normal style of living in the building and acceptance of each other’s needs and desires came the threat of surveillance, discovery and betrayal. The reader is allowed to experience the lives of the residents written in the first person. We enter their lives to witness their struggles for survival. The Jewish family, the Raphaels, and the refugee seamstress disappear overnight in 1939 leaving their possessions behind, but where were the valuable paintings so prominently displayed on the walls of their apartment. So begins the story of their disappearance from Brussels and the people still at 33 Place Brugmann.
We learn of the paths of the residents going forward, the food shortages and hunger, the brave forays into the resistance movement. The resident gossip, who attempts to ingratiate herself into the lives of the other residents by proffering her cakes, is suspicious of activity in the building and always alert to any new persons of interest. The colonel is of special attention.
The Raphael Family have reached England. Their son has joined the RAF and serves as a navigator. The daughter has become a nurse and is assisting in the care and rehabilitation of injured military personnel. The refugee seamstress is in Paris engaged in resistance activities.
In Brussels, in the midst of uncertainty of survival, there becomes the promise of new life. A baby is conceived. There is demonstration in the strength of the pregnant mother when she loses her devoted father to the Nazi regime and there seems little hope that the father of her baby is still alive. In her darkest time, she is inspired to take the lessons of hope from her father’s drawings and writings. She chooses to remember that living is worth the effort for herself and for her baby.
We do get to know what happened to the valuable paintings in the Raphael residence. An ingenious solution was found prior to the departure of the family and I’m sure readers will be very impressed when they learn of it.
33 Place Brugmann
[2025]
by Alice Austen
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978152 6 67873 7
$32.99; 343pp