I just finished reading this book, was greatly surprised and moved by it. A "love of a lifetime" story written by a male author, told by a male first person narrator, which is unusual in itself. Not at all a potboiler romance, not at all sappy, but a deep and sensitive telling full of psychological insight, complexity and sublety, along with respect for the ambiguities, the uncertainties, the glory and the sorrow of "true" love, of love and happiness in the grasp of two people, and then gone, but never reprised and never forgotten. The main action took place in Cold War Berlin before the Wall came down, and is recalled and relived 26 years later after the female protagonist has died, and old journals come to light. There is a lot of good observation and storytelling about life in divided Berlin during the last years of the Cold War, but it surrounds and informs the central story of the love between the two main characters. I recommend this book for anyone who is intrigued by the idea of a great love story in a le Carré setting.
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