Review: "A Night Divided" by Jennifer Nielsen

A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen
Published 2015 via Scholastic
★★

In East Berlin, Gerta is living a life divided: her father and one of her two brothers were in West Berlin when the wall went up, and she and her mother and other brother are at the mercy of the communist state—and the Stasi. It's been years, and though Gerta yearns for a freer life, she cannot imagine that it will ever be possible.

Until she sees her father on a viewing platform on the other side of the wall—and he signals to her. Dig.

I read this not long after Over and Out, and if I take anything away from the two stories it's the viewing platforms that were available in West Berlin to peek over into the East—West Berlin was landlocked, but East Berlin was the zoo. (The realities and mechanics of the Berlin Wall still boggle my mind somewhat.) The stories are fairly similar—both middle grade books focused on family and friendship and survival, both with girls ultimately determined to escape into the West. A Night Divided feels a bit more realistic to me in terms of the eventual escape plan, and I appreciate the details about life in the DDR. Things aren't bad for Gerta, but they're not good, either, and in East Berlin there is always, always the threat that things will get worse. Too, informants were common in East Germany, some collaborating by choice and others under threat from the Stasi. I'm not sure how heavily youth were involved in this (Wikipedia tells me that some 10,000 informers were underage, and this article is worth a read), but it's a compelling plot line—a reminder that at the time, even your most trusted friends could not always be trusted, and your most private spaces could be bugged.

I'd love to find some more YA or adult fiction exploring life in East Germany (but without turning into thrillers or noir or whatever—you'd think this would not be such a tall order, and yet), but this makes for a great intro for middle grade readers.