Books: Old, New and Obscure – 33 PLACE BRUGMANN

33 PLACE BRUGMANN
By Alice Austen
Grove Press, New York, 2025

When you must wait more than a month to get one of multiple library copies of a new novel, you know it must be popular. When you pick up the book and read glowing comments by award winning authors such as Ann Patchett and Abraham Verghese, you get even more excited.

The residents of the apartment building at 33 Place Brugmann, Brussels are the characters in this novel during the years from 1939-1943. The description of the building and surroundings are well detailed by Alice Austen who lived at that address decades later. In addition, the author is a playwright and filmmaker who so clearly depicts her characters’ strengths and weaknesses through their dialog as well as description.

The central character is a young woman named Charlotte, an artist who is completely colorblind; one character describes her as seeing everything in greyscale. Others living at 33 Place Brugmann integral to the many subplots include her architect father, her photographer best friend, an art dealer, a retired colonel, and the son of an attorney and seamstress. These characters are integral to the many subplots. 

Light has a significant role in this book where creatives take central roles. But darkness prevails over much of the story. A teaching nun tells Charlotte’s father when the other children taunt her colorblindness, “No one sees anything the same way. When we stop trying to understand how others see the world, when we lose our compassion, our empathy, we become animals. Worse than animals.”

Austen’s ending is satisfactory and unsatisfactory at the same time. Some of the villains die, but many of the good people also die. Some questions are never answered. And yet we know Charlotte has survived and her father’s final gift gives hope. “What is thinkable is also possible.”

— Mary Barbera