I Keep My Shadow Light is a darkly funny social commentary novel about feeling lost and learning how to belong in Berlin.
Berlin: Europe's promised city. But like many new arrivals, Maeve is struggling to get the basics down. No permanent home, no job, no lasting romance or reliable friendships. Just the arms of the German state, sweeping her into its heady, bureaucratic embrace.
The story begins on Maeve's first day of an integration course - a requirement for her unemployment benefits. For the next seven months, this group of migrants and misfits will grow together and fall apart as they are pushed to integrate, assimilate, and learn the language in order to get a job. We witness police barging into the classroom, a racist supply teacher, a troubled classmate suffering PTSD, and tense debates about 'why women are best suited to placing the flowers on the table'.
Despite the revolving door of classmates, the course offers Maeve a sense of grounding, community, and unlikely friendships.
There's Viktor, escaping persecution in Chechnya. His sharp tongue and hard-set expression disguise his softer parts. Partying and caring for his flatmate Svenja distract him from his internal monsters.
Zehra moved to Berlin for an arranged marriage with a German-Turkish man. She is hardworking, neat and sweet, but brewing frustrations.
Karam, Maeve's flatmate, fled war in Syria. His warm and open demeanour leaves him vulnerable to being moulded by Berlin's rough hands. After four years in Germany without seeing his family, he feels estranged from integral parts of himself.
And Maeve, from the UK. She's a dreamer, an overthinker, and has a dose of millennial insecurity. She puts her energy into trying to fix the world around her and looking for love in the wrong places, ignoring the lack of love she feels for herself.
We follow the ups and downs of these four 20-something-year-olds as they struggle to get a grip on who they are and attempt to build a lasting home in a disposable new world.
The book tackles themes of urban loneliness, the complicated relationships between the state and the individual, dominant culture and subcultures, family members, friends, flatmates and lovers. It looks at how these relationships are affected by political and religious views, or formed despite them. The setting - Berlin - alludes to how history plays a hand in the present, and how quickly a place and its people can change.
I Keep My Shadow Light asks what it means to belong in contemporary Europe.
If you liked Perfection, White Teeth, or Leaving the Atocha Station, you may like I Keep My Shadow Light.
