Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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Ma guardarla era un po’ come ritornare nelle Storie Berlinesi di Isherwood, il nome collettivo col quale si includono sia questo romanzo che l’altro Addio a Berlino (dal quale è invece liberamente tratto il musical e il film Cabaret). He had just finished his eighth, he told us: it dealt with the amours peculiar to a winter sport hotel. Isherwood even has the oblivious Norris deliver a moment of ironic awareness of the situation in Germany. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. The discussion of politics is prevalent but more from the Communist cast as they are almost unwittingly strangled out of existence by the predominantly faceless Nazis.

His approach is to provide a thorough, honest and personalized service with the aim of delivering good quality care. Of course, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that a novel written during and partially about the Nazis’ rise to power should have its share of anti-Semitic sentiment.

We had referred to the thing at last, and our relief was so great that we were like two people who have just made a mutual declaration of love. Towards the end of the novel, when the Nazis are in power and the Holocaust underway, anti-Semitism flows thick and fast, expressed by Bradshaw’s acquaintances as Jews ruining countries which aren’t theirs, Jews being guilty of causing Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the inflation that followed, Jews being the creators of the Weimar Constitution. Bachelor’s Thick Lincoln Pea Soup out of a packet with a full pack of skinless pork sausages heated up in it (yes, sausages boiled in pea soup, you read that right) was one of the Saturday ‘treats’ my dad used to cook for us.

At one point in the novel, Bradshaw reflects on his impressions of Mr Norris, a very telling passage as it turns out. Many of his works are more like diaries than plot driven stories, but the journey is very enjoyable even if the destination isn't very exciting.

In the late 1960s and '70s he turned to autobiographical works: Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, one month of his diary with drawings by Don Bachardy. And if, in my letters to England, I sometimes referred to him as ‘a most amazing old crook’, I only meant by this that I wanted to imagine him as a glorified being; audacious and self-reliant, reckless and calm. I get the feeling from Max’s review that there are some differences between Cabaret and Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin (which I’ve yet to read) so maybe you’ll be okay with the novels. Isherwood ensure that we are constantly told half-truths and Norris’ ‘riddles’ ensures his deceptiveness.

I am currently a Consultant Orthopaedic Hand Surgeon at the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, based at both Peterborough City Hospital and at Hinchingbrooke Hospital. Isherwood, and Norris choose the Left, even though Norris is not necessarily, ever, quite what he seems, and may have fingers in many pies, as he also has some friends whose political allegiance seem to belong more naturally to the right.One of the characters, a German aristocrat, Baron Pregnitz, is quite clearly gay, but Isherwood is much more vague about Bradshaw’s sexuality.