The Porcelain Maker review by Nick Rennison, Sunday Times Culture, December 10th, 2023
TV producer and screenwriter Sarah Freethy has made a bold decision with her choice of subject matter for her debut novel. Fiction set in Nazi Germany demands sensitivity and sympathetic understanding. It is all too easy to appear crass or simplistic, but Freethy rises to the challenges that she sets herself.
The Porcelain Maker is for the most part an absorbing study of love and art fighting for survival in an age of hate. Her central characters, Max and Bettina, meet as art students at a party in the 1920s. He is an Austrian Jew with ambitions to become an architect; she a gifted expressionist painter, eager to escape the restrictions of her provincial background. Falling in love, they move together to Berlin, but the Weimar Republic is in its death throes and the Nazis lurk menacingly in the wings.
With Hitler in power a few years later, their love affair is threatened. Max is arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he is able to avoid its worst horrors only through his artistic talent, working as a modeller for a porcelain factory run by Himmler’s SS. Bettina struggles to retain hope that she might see him again and enters a marriage of convenience that she soon regrets.
In a parallel narrative, set in 1990s London, Bettina’s daughter, Clara, who has lost contact with her German roots, embarks on a journey to uncover her mother’s past and learn the true identity of the father she never knew. Max and Bettina’s tale is so compelling that Clara’s can occasionally seem like an unwanted interruption to the unfolding of their drama, although the two stories come together movingly in the novel’s final pages.
PRESS & COMMENTARY FOR THE PORCELAIN MAKER
'Once I started reading The Porcelain Maker, I didn't want to stop . . . Freethy is brilliant as she weaves two time periods effortlessly into a page-turning journey to uncover a past of heroism, betrayal, love, and loss'
Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Three Sisters
‘In her exquisitely crafted and poignant debut, Sarah Freethy brings readers an unforgettable tale of love and loss. The Porcelain Maker introduces us to a singular, riveting relationship forged between a talented Jewish architect and a gifted German painter during the heady days of the Bauhaus movement in the Weimar Republic of Germany. As the dark tide of Nazism washes over the land, the lovers face dangers unimaginable, learning that art alone can sustain and save them - and bear witness for the generations. Phenomenal.’
Marie Benedict, New York Times bestselling author of The Mitford Affair and coauthor of The Personal Librarian
‘Like the portrait of the Viking at the heart of her story, Sarah Freethy's The Porcelain Maker exists on two levels: on the surface, a story about a woman's search for the truth about her parentage, tracing the forgotten by the objects they left behind, and, beneath it, a heartbreaking story of beauty in the midst of brutality and love in an age of hate as two young artists fight to stay alive and together amid the horrors of Nazi rule in 1940s Germany. A story that will move and surprise you - and leave you reaching for the tissue box as the final details unfold.’
Lauren Willig, New York Times bestselling author of Band of Sisters and the upcoming Two Wars and a Wedding
‘A standout novel of heartbreak, survival and hope in time of war. Gripping, beautifully written, The Porcelain Maker is destined to be a huge bestseller’
Rachel Hore, bestselling author of One Moonlit Night and A Beautiful Spy
‘As detailed, delicate, beautiful, and brutal as the hidden porcelain Sarah Freethy conjures, this heart-rending debut intertwines real history and characters both noble and endearing into a story to live in, learn from, and love.’
Meg Waite Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Postmistress of Paris
“Freethy’s wonderful details enrichen the narrative, allowing the characters and the artwork to come alive as the mystery is finally solved. A riveting and immersive novel, at the intersection of art and war.”
In 1993, middle-aged Clara Vogel is in search of her father’s identity. Her late mother spoke little about her experience in wartime Germany, but she left one clue—a rare porcelain Viking. During the 1920s, Bettina Vogel is a freewheeling artist in Weimar Germany when she meets Jewish Austrian student Max Ehrlich. They build a life together as the Nazis rise to power. When the couple’s attempt to escape Germany is thwarted, they are separated. Max is transported to Dachau and is eventually sent to the Allach porcelain factory on the concentration camp’s grounds to work as a sculptor, while Bettina is quickly married to a Nazi officer who encourages her interest in art as long as she keeps her work socially acceptable. But Bettina’s rebellious spirit lives on, and an unexpected reunion with Max leads to a shocking collaboration that alters their future. With its well-researched plot, engaging characters, and dramatic twists, Freethy’s debut works as both a World War II love story and a testament to the ability of art to speak truth to power. Readers of Heather Morris and Kelly Rimmer will be captivated.
Nanette Donohue - Booklist
