Though they arrive at different moments and carry with them varying degrees of significance, every relationship experiences a moment of crisis, a crossroads at which its discontented parties, troubled by forces both internal and external, can decide to endure a rough patch of road for the sake of the long haul, or to call it a day and go their separate ways in the knowledge that they've extracted all the good that can come of their journey together . Those who choose the former transform their choice into a turning point of their relationship, a crucible whose endurance expands the scope of their love . The latter, meanwhile, consider themselves blessed to have quit while they were ahead. It's impossible to know which option is the right one for we lack the counterfactual, the playing out of the alternative scenario to which it must be compared . But we can be presented with the anatomy of such a crossroads and be asked to decide for ourselves . And this is precisely what Mr. Boyes has done with his humorous if unbelievable memoir.
Dogged by the pressures of work and the dissatisfactions of lives not lived to their liking, Mr. Boyes, a British ex-pat living and working in Germany, and Lena, his German girlfriend, are stuck in a rut. Not only is he not happy with his job working for a British newspaper obsessed with stories about neo-Nazis, she is exhausted by a life designing fashionable homes for rich divorcees with too much money. He is bored; she is overworked, a deadly combination that has drained their relationship of the fun it once enjoyed.
Imagine Mr. Boyes' surprise, then, when, at their darkest hour, a bolt from the blue starts them down an altogether new path. Lena, who inherited a family home in rural Prussia, hits upon the idea of reconnecting by slowly restoring the dilapidated home to its former glory. Both her idea and her gesture are eagerly accepted by Mr. Boyes who takes the project one step farther. What if they turn the home into a tourist attraction for British people abroad? Grants from the British government could cover the cost of the home's extensive repairs, delivering them a home for which they can be proud. Lena reluctantly accepts the scheme which proves to be disastrous for not only the house, its occupants and the interests of the local mayor, but also their relationship which the scheme was meant to salvage, not destroy . And yet, over bouts of food poisoning and sabotage, united in the face of weird servants and cricketing enemies, there remains a chance that they could still come together, made one by the perils of rustic Germany.
To Prussia With Love is a delightful and conceited romp, not only through the backwaters of Europe but the wilds of a seemingly unrescuable relationship. rom the start, our two protagonists seem hopelessly mismatched for one another, he boarish and singleminded, she suave and cultured, a characterization that is only re-enforced by the 200-odd pages of their adventure together . Their awkwardness is matched, though, by the eccentricities of Mr. Boyes' charmingly calamitous friends and by the disaster that is the Prussian home he and Lena have decided to repair. Leaky, drafty and on the edge of ruin, it has a facade only an inheritor could love . And yet, its rebuilding is the decision that launches the thousand disasters chronicled here with such wit and charm.
Mr. Boyes' amusing prose ably captures the absurdities of his adventure in rural Prussia . And so, his work must be considered a success, for this was his purpose. But there's something about To Prussia With Love that seems too fantastic to be true. This reads like the leavings of a skit from Fawlty Towers, complete with dour East Germans, fanciful plots and characters who seem too large for life. Perhaps its authenticity is irrelevant. After all, this is a work whose self-destructiveness will widely amuse, but it all just feels a bit too neat for my tastes, like the half-fevered daydream of a man all-too aware that he's once again about to be single. However, if every event in here is true, well, then we should all venture to Roger and Lena's little Prussian B&B. Hilarity cannot but ensue.
Funny but suspiciously tidy. Still, the extent to which this is a rumination on relationships and the events that knit and dissolve them makes it a success. (3/5 Stars)
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