Some exquisiteness ennobles. Some exquisiteness draws blood. Such was my experience reading The Words I Never Wrote, (2020), the historical novel written by Jane Thyme.

The enigmatic title speaks to the estrangement of two sisters, inseparable and gifted artists as they grew up on their British estate at Birnham Park. Vaguely aware of Germany’s 1936 rearmament in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, one sister follows her industrialist husband to Berlin, while the other relocates to Paris to advance her career in journalism. Their exchange of letters abruptly stops the following year.

To unravel this estrangement becomes the self-appointed task of a photographer, in present time, who happens upon the unfinished manuscript of a novel wedged in the case of an antique Underwood typewriter; such comprises the first half of The Words I Never Wrote.

Upon its yellowing pages unfold juxtapositions that craze spirit: the sisters’ divergent lifestyles with consequent distancing, the underbelly of Nazi Germany’s heinousness and opulence, prickly fears of arrests and the underground, burgeoning law codes and the impossibility of observing them, Hitler and his henchmen attending the Berlin Philharmonic, slave labor cultivating choice foods for Nazi tables, the torture and random abuse of lawbreakers requiring medical care—And so much more. So violently did the sensuousness of the images suck me within the story line that I had to put the book down.

Yet, the preciseness of these images, especially, the formal gardens having gone to seed, the estates along the Wanasee River, the outdoors in all seasons, the allied bombings of Berlin and consequent mayhem, lovemaking and separations, contributed an almost lyrical dimension to this novel. As a writer, I often stopped over an exceptionally well-worded phrase and relished its afterglow. 

A workout, yes, but The Words I Never Wrote left its mark—exquisite is its end.