The Glimmer Palace

The Glimmer Palace

By Beatrice Colin (Riverhead Books)

The story opens at the turn of the 20th century and closes as Hitler prepares to start World War II. Colin, the British author of two previous novels, frames Lilly's story with scenes from the larger history of the German film industry, at its height in the 1920s.

Born on New Year's Eve in 1899, Lilly is the incarnation of this toxic mix of glitter and despair. Over the course of nearly half a century, as troops parade through Berlin and bread lines erupt into riots, she is transformed, almost accidentally, from Tiny Lil, the unwanted baby, to Lidi, one of Germany's most celebrated film stars.

Lilly's rise is counterbalanced by the downward trajectory of Hanne Schmidt, a fellow orphan she befriends while selling roses in cabarets. Hanne has a desperate yearning for stardom, but in place of pulchritude she can offer only tired eyes and a chipped front tooth.

By imbuing her work with a strikingly female perspective, Colin distinguishes her story from the best-known treatment of the Weimar Republic and the cabaret era, that of Christopher Isherwood's essentially autobiographical Berlin stories.

But what can appear artful frequently devolves into artificiality - when, say, the narration recounts key events in terse summations. In just a few pages, couples meet, fall in love and marry; Lilly finds fame in mere paragraphs. As the story unfolds, this technique begins to feel like a cop-out, as if Colin simply lacked the skill to tell her story.

Still, The Glimmer Palace can be absorbing in its grim authenticity. Even at the height of her fame, Lilly is despondent, realizing that the escapist existence she has sought so intently will never truly satisfy her. With alcohol, hashish and cocaine coursing through her, she can only wonder "if there had been a point when she had inadvertently chosen her glorious life onscreen over her real destiny".