Book Review: The Moment by Douglas Kennedy

I can’t remember the last time a book moved me to tears, but The Moment by Douglas Kennedy opened the floodgates of emotion not once, not twice, but three times. Embarrassingly on one of those occasions I was on the tube, but thankfully no one question my emotional state (a minor benefit of the ‘keep oneself to oneself’ nature of London commuters!).

I’m an avid Douglas Kennedy fan and I think The Moment may have surpassed The Pursuit of Happiness as my favourite of his books. Admittedly it gets off to a slow start as we meet the main character, Thomas Nesbitt, in present-day Maine. Kennedy paints a picture of a lonely middle-aged man, coming to terms with the end of an unsatisfactory marriage. For me there was probably too much focus on the character at this point in his life, but trusting Kennedy’s calibre convinced me to persevere and I am so glad I did.  When Thomas receives a box from a woman named Petra Dussman, Kennedy transports the story to Cold War-era Berlin.

The book weaves together several tales of lost love. The primary story is of the intense love affair between Thomas and Petra, but it also intertwines a powerful story of parental love as well as one about homosexual love where one partner must keep the affair hidden.  I’m not a huge fan of love stories as such and some of the dialogue between Thomas and Petra was perhaps a little cloying but it conveys the intensity of their brief affair. 

It’s hard to explain what exactly moved me to tears without spoiling the plot but each of those scenes also surprised me – I did not see the twists of the plot coming at all.

Set against the political backdrop of Berlin as the coalface of the Cold War, the book paints a bleak picture for the people caught up in that situation and the heartbreak it rendered on so many people. I love reading books with a modern historical setting and learning something about our world.

I also love books that tie-up all the endings and The Moment mostly does that, although I would have loved to know what happened to one of the key secondary characters – Thomas’ flamboyant flatmate Alastair. That aside, I would thoroughly recommend The Moment if you’re looking for a book that will keep you gripped and surprise you with twists and turns.