The narrator of this dark, disturbing novella is a low-level government clerk in a nameless city, which has recently been occupied by an invading army. To begin with, life continues largely as it was before, except that the narrator's younger daughter informs him that one of her schoolmates, whose father is a wealthy man and a member of an ethnic minority, has been left on her own, her parents stranded in the now-cut-off capital city. (Eventually it becomes clear, from the progress of the events Palliser recounts, that Sufferance's setting can only be Poland under Nazi occupation; but the narrator continues to use non-specific terms throughout the story, referring to "the occupiers", "the capital", or "the community" to which the girl belongs, and whose rights are increasingly constrained.) The narrator and his wife decide to invite the girl to live with them, a decision they reach through a combination of genuine compassion and concern, motivated self-interest—the narrator reasons that the girl's father will not only reimburse him for the expense of her care, but will offer him a job in his business—and an apparent inability to grasp the seriousness of the situation. This last trait is shared by the girl herself, who is not only convinced that her parents will soon return to claim her, but continues to cling to her sense of superiority, lording her family's wealth over the narrator's two daughters, and insisting that he continue to give her the allowance she was accustomed to receive from her parents.

This failure to see, or to acknowledge, what is happening around them soon infects all the characters in the novel. In his work life, the narrator soon observes the curtailing of "the protected community"'s rights, becoming involved in the project of cataloguing, and eventually appropriating, their property. Workplace closures and an economic downturn cut the family's income to a fraction of what it was. The narrator's older daughter is unable to find work, and soon begins associating with local hooligans who support the occupying force. But within the home, the family and their guest continue to enact a seemingly ordinary domestic drama. The girl's selfishness leads to squabbles with the two daughters, the narrator's wife complains about the girl's supercilious manners and sense of entitlement, and when outside restrictions are placed on her—when she's forced to hide in the apartment full-time, for example—her response, as well as that of everyone else in the family, is to complain.

At the same time, one wonders how much of this obliviousness is an act. The narrator's voice is analytical and detail-oriented, reporting with equanimity such events as his brother in law being forced to divorce his wife, who is also a member of the protected community. It's easy to suspect that there are considerations beneath the surface that he is concealing—from himself, perhaps, as much as the readers. When he somehow arranges to take in the girl without anybody else knowing where to find her, is this a simple, bumbling error, or a sign that he always had sinister designs against her? When he goes back to her home to try to access her father's safe, is he safeguarding her property, or trying to take it for himself? Our impression of the girl, too, feels incomplete. Is she truly as oblivious as the narrator describes? Or are her foot-stamping threats to report to her father how badly she's been treated a desperate coping mechanism, a way of avoiding acknowledging the immense danger she's in, and her inability to trust her protectors?

For most of its length, reading Sufferance is an exercise in mingled dread and bemusement. At some points in the novel the narrator seems on the verge of abandoning his charge out of sheer lack of awareness—having realized that he has committed an illegal act by hiding the girl, he tries to convince her to slip into the newly-formed ghetto, reasoning that she will be happier among her own kind. Other times, it almost seems as if the family will unwillingly, and with only partial awareness of having done it, fall into becoming righteous gentiles. But as time passes and the trap into which the protected community has been led begins to close, it becomes clear that what Palliser is writing is neither a moral parable nor a dark comedy. We spend the novel frustrated that its characters are not better, more aware people, but instead keep almost stumbling into either heroism or perfidy. As their options dwindle and the danger they are in mounts, however, we eventually have to recognize that even the best version of these people might have found themselves helpless in the face of the great machine of evil that has surrounded them. Sufferance ends with an unspeakable act, and Palliser, without excusing it, uses it to remind us that heroism is rare not only because people fail to embody it, but because the world around them is designed to stamp it out.

Charles Palliser's new book Sufferance feels like historical fiction but has the air of an allegory.
In a time of war a family takes in a teenager whose wealthy parents have not returned to their home city due to the conflict. She is from a community that is being persecuted by the authoruities. And while she creates friction in the household, the father/narrator feels the ned to protect her, a move that brings him and the rest of the family into the crosshairs. This is a tough read - through simple language, small steps and plenty of froeshadowing, Palliser creates an atmosphere of increasing tension and dread. And much like the recent Booker Prize winner Prophet Song, considers how an ordindary family can be caught under the wheels of an oppressive regime.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

I own and have read all of Charles Palliser’s previous novels. He is a literary author, beloved of English degree courses, and he draws on literary sources for inspiration. His books are never primarily about the story, but rather are clever exercises in style. And as such they can be alienating whilst being admirable on an intellectual level.

This is exactly how I felt about Sufferance. It is set in an unnamed Eastern European country during a war, in a city partitioned by the invading country. Citizens belonging to a particular unnamed ethnic group, with a reputation for amassing wealth, are progressively singled out for increasing levels of persecution, and are prevented from crossing the border after partition . The unnamed narrator has two unnamed daughters (are you spotting a pattern here?), the younger of which is at school with a girl from said ethnic group whose parents are prevented from returning home; in the hope of a financial reward for looking after her, the narrator decides to take her in. Between the girl’s unpleasant character and the increasing persecution of her ethnic group, this decision leads to ever greater complications and tensions within the family.

The writing style is confusing, alienating and tortuous, mirroring the narrator’s thought processes and changing reactions to unfolding events. We wonder, is he unusually obtuse or in denial? Refusing to see what is happening, or unable to compass it? We are invited to contemplate how the progression of Jewish persecution might have unfolded in incremental degrees under the population’s radar, and to draw parallels with the rise of far right ideologies in our own time.

I didn’t feel this was a particularly insightful addition to the genre; it didn’t make me see anything I wasn’t already aware of. The writing is as good as one would expect from this author, but between feeling it had been done before and having absolutely no sympathy with any of the weak, unpleasant, self-centred characters, this remained an alienating read till the end. For a story of unimaginable horror unfolding by degrees, it completely lacked heart and left me unmoved when it should have been profoundly emotional.

A chilling book. A father narrates the experience of his family in war time. We are not told the place or time but it is clear that this takes place within an occupied country during the Second World War. A very ordinary family. An act of kindness (not entirely altruistic) which leads with stark inevitability to a horrifying conclusion. A very plausible imagining of how the thin veneer of civilisation can vanish in the face of the dehumanisation of war. None of the characters are named which contributes to the sense of detachment through which the father unemotionally tells the story of how he grapples with a series of problems as the war begins to impinge directly on his family. Having read the book, I was interested to find what the author had said about it: https://www.crimetime.co.uk/sufferance-charles-palliser-on-his-new-novel/

Thanks to Guernica and Netgalley for the ARC.

A taut and chilling novel that takes as its basis a country invaded, a family’s act of kindness that is fraught and increasingly complicated. We aren’t told what country this is, or the time period, though there are no cell phones mentioned. But the focus of the invaders becomes a minority ethnic group, the forced disclosure of their assets, the taking of those assets by the state, the forced relocation of that group into a walled part of the old city, the strictures, regulations, their identity cards, hangings of those found to be helping that besieged ethnic minority. It is the start of the Holocaust perhaps, or perhaps it is another Holocaust- which is already happening in less regulated ways in parts of the world, and which seems more and more likely today in others. A family takes in one of their younger daughter’s school friends when her parents are cut off in the part of the country where the invaders now rule. The school friend is from that ethnic minority, from a wealthy family recently moved to the old capitol, but she is no Anne Frank, instead wily and cunning despite her young years, manipulative, selfish, a liar about the glittering life she and her family led before the invasion - she doesn’t grasp what is actually happening. The father, a lowly accountant working for the state, imagines the gratitude of the girl’s parents when they realize what he has done for her- imagines the girl’s father will give him a much better job, will reimburse him for all he is spending to keep the girl safe. Inner dissension roils the family, the older daughter having to give up her room, the demands of the girl that the father tries to and the noose around them all only tightens - his own family is at severe risk, as colleagues of his from that ethnic group begin to disappear. Told in a calm, dispassionate manner, one feels the fear, as well as the very delayed understanding of what is happening, of how easily people succumb, follow the rules, how doing good when confronting evil is not at all easy. Compelling and haunting.

Thanks to Guernica World Editions and Netgalley for the arc.

I’ve been reading a lot of Second World War fiction recently so the premise of Sufferance is familiar. A family takes in a young girl from a wealthy but stigmatised minority, thinking it will be for a short period while her own relatives are absent from their city. However, following a period of conflict, the city is divided and the new regime is making life increasingly difficult. The girl’s relatives do not return and repression against her community increases. The family come under increasing pressure as the daughter’s stay now seems to extend indefinitely and places them in danger.

Sufferance is neither a story of heroism and jeopardy nor of outright cruelty. The family are living with ordinary frustrations – there is friction with the neighbours, they have an ambiguous social status (they inherited their flat from the narrator’s wife’s father but his career is stalled). The wider changes wrought by the regime bring discomforts which escalate into hardships and lead to resentment from his wife and daughters as they have to share the little they have with an additional person.

There are a couple of things that make Sufferance distinctive. There are no names – not of characters or places. There is no sure sense of the historical period – although we do get hints – this is a predominantly Christian country, they have wireless but not television. This means we are freed from thinking that this is something that only happens in that country, to those people, that it couldn’t happen here. (As I’m writing, the shocking report on the UK’s infected blood scandal has just been released and the response of many right-leaning journalists is incredulity – “I thought we were better than that”). The second is that this is a first-person narrative from the father of the family. So everything he tells us is up for question.

The narrator’s account of his own motives fluctuates. He claims compassion for the girl. But then he also says he hopes her wealthy father might be able to help him professionally. Later, the time he spends alone with the girl causes resentment from his family, which hints at another darker motive. The narrator is disingenuous, when things go wrong for those around him, he presents himself as passive, well-meaning but overwhelmed. He is, always, reluctant to step forward, to take responsibility. But, the nagging question is, wouldn’t you be?

There is one big downside to the lack of specifics. We get hints of the characters of the narrator, his wife, his children and the girl. We get a sense of the conflicts between them, and the pressures they all face as a result of that initial choice. However, without the colour of character and place and atmosphere, it is not an immersive story. The narrator is (deliberately) a somewhat colourless and pedantic character, which can lead to a feeling of repitition – the pressure ratchets up, the narrator and his wife discuss their predicament, they find no solution and so feel increasingly trapped, and so on. Everything stays the same, until it doesn’t.

So, Sufferance is an interesting and thought-provoking read, but for me a book to admire rather than to love.

The details hardly matter - they're recognizable enough, after all. An unnamed man recounts the tale of an unspecified war and oppressive regime, and of the girl he and his family try to hide from the Enemy - and all the unraveling effects of that, and each subsequent, decision. It's Aa stifling, brutal, tightly-packed story that unfolds slowly but ruthlessly, the tension mounting with a sense of claustrophobic inevitability, spiraling toward a gut punch of an ending. I've long been a fan of Charles Palliser's work, and Sufferance is admittedly very little like his earlier books - but it shares with them Palliser's gift for making every word matter, crafting prose that can sidle under your skin and slip a knife between your ribs.

Thank you to the publisher for the advance review copy.

The War, a country in Eastern Europe, the Western Zone, the Eastern Zone, the Enemy, the Occupation, minority members of the “other” community; a “decontamination” of the nation’s source of infection – all ambiguous names and phrases, but unquestionably the reader is placed in a WWII story.

As the father narrates this story, we learn that he, his wife, and two daughters have taken in a young school friend to stay until she can be reunited with her family, who are trapped in the Western Zone after the invasion with all means of communication severed. This family is of the “other” community.

With a self-serving motive, the narrator is convinced that in caring for this child, her wealthy father and owner of a successful business will be so grateful that he will be rewarded with a better job. As he moves among his neighbors and co-workers and we see his interactions with them, his self-importance and self-righteousness are evident. It becomes clear the father is an unreliable narrator. Is this young girl as spoiled and selfish as he claims? Is he really the magnanimous person he perceives himself to be? With this girl in their midst, paranoia, internal conflict, and discord are tearing apart the family. While the occupying regime tightens its authority, rules and consequences become increasingly harsh, and the family is trapped in a situation with any choice resulting in severe consequences. It is too late to register her as required; they cannot continue to secret her.

A sinister undertone lurks throughout the narrative, and a real sense of doom overshadows. In the father, Palliser has created a rare character who in turns can be sympathetic and contemptible. His story races to an ending that leaves the reader stunned. This novel will evoke a full range of emotions. An impressive novel not to be missed.

Historical Novels Review, May 2024

Charles Palliser is probably best known as the author of The Quincunx, a long and twisty Dickensian novel which I read and loved years ago, but he has also written five more books including The Unburied and this new one, Sufferance.

Sufferance is a strange novel as none of the characters are named – not even the narrator – and we are not told where or when the story is set. However, it’s obvious enough that we are reading about an occupied European city during the Second World War and at the start of the novel, the Enemy has divided the city into Western and Eastern Zones. We also know that our narrator is a respectable, law-abiding man who works for the government and has a wife and two teenage daughters.

When the narrator’s youngest daughter brings a friend home from school and explains that the girl’s parents have become trapped in the other zone, unable to return to their house, he thinks he is doing the right thing by inviting her to stay with them until her parents come back. He doesn’t expect it to be for long – and it seems that the girl’s parents are wealthy people, who might repay the family for their kindness when they return. Unfortunately, a series of government announcements makes it clear that the girl belongs to a ‘protected community’, who are gradually having their rights taken away and are being closely monitored by the Enemy occupiers.

As the weeks and months go by with no news of the girl’s parents, our narrator and his wife become increasingly anxious and afraid. What will happen if the authorities discover that they are sheltering one of the protected community? To make things worse, the girl has proved to be a selfish, manipulative person who seems ungrateful for the help she has been given and completely unaware of the danger all of them are facing. Tensions within the family start to build as they struggle to agree on how to deal with the situation, but things are only going to get worse the longer they wait.

This is an excellent novel; the vagueness surrounding names, dates and places, which I could have found irritating in another book, is used very effectively here to create a sinister, unsettling atmosphere. Although the historical parallels are very obvious, we are left with the impression that the things described could happen anywhere, at any time and to anybody. The sense of fear and desperation felt by the narrator comes across very strongly, as with the introduction of identity cards, rationing and new laws regarding the girl’s community, he becomes aware that he is committing a crime.

Sufferance is a fascinating exploration of how each decision we make can have serious consequences and how quickly things can spiral out of control. I loved it and really must find time to re-read The Quincunx!

They were a perfectly nice, normal family. A father with a low level government job, a mother, and two daughters, typical sisters who didn’t get along. Everything changed when the youngest daughter suggested she bring home a school classmate who didn’t have any friends. It was a kind gesture. The friend charmed the parents, she was so well behaved and well spoken.

The world around them was in turmoil. When the Enemy takes over the family’s homeland, everything changes. Learning that the girl’s family was away and unable to return home, they kindly take her in. It would only be a few days, they thought, and since her family was well off and well connected, it might bring a better position for the father.

The days turned to weeks turned to months. The Enemy instituted new laws, wage cuts, prices skyrocketed. The family budget is stressed, still providing for the girl, who is a member of a “community” sanctioned by the Enemy government, their rights slowly being taken away.

The father finds himself in a trap, needing to hide the girl to protect his family, unable to send her anywhere without risk, for now their sheltering the girl was illegal. Hospitality is replaced by self preservation.

The time and place are unnamed, although the circumstances and events reflect countries taken over by Nazi Germany. It allows us to put ourselves into the characters, considering the choices we would make if it happened to us. It is easy to look backwards and judge, ask why citizens made the choices they did. This dark tale guides us through what it is like to experience an increasing threat that turns our liberal acceptance to self-preservation, what we will do to survive. It is a shocking revelation.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Sufferance is set in an unnamed country in Eastern Europe that has been occupied and partitioned by an enemy during the Second World War. In fact the country is just the first of the many unnamed things in the novel. We never learn the name of the narrator, his wife, his two daughters or even the young girl he takes into his home in an act of (misplaced, as it turns out) charity. Or perhaps it’s self-interest as she belongs to a wealthy family – or so it appears. What we do know is that her surname marks her out as a member of an ironically named ‘protected community’ whose day to day lives and livelihoods are being progressively constrained by the occupying power. Again, the community is not named, the reader instead left to draw their own conclusions.

An unsettling air of menace permeates the book which only increases as our narrator finds he has placed himself and his family in danger by taking in the girl. His role as a government official tasked with enforcing some of the occupying power’s increasingly severe actions against the girl’s community complicates things further. He also faces his wife and daughters’ growing unhappiness with the girl’s presence. Spoiled and prone to untruthfulness, she is not a child it is easy to love.

Our narrator is forced to take more and more extreme measures to prevent the girl’s presence being discovered by the authorities. It’s difficult not to feel unsettled by some of these thing, and their obvious parallels, but then I think that’s the author’s intention. And to make us question the things we might be prepared to do – or not do – in similar circumstances. The simple prose with which the story unfolds only adds to the sinister feel of this skilfully crafted, dark little tale.

No good deed goes unpunished." "Following the sudden unexpected invasion, everything closed for two weeks; schools, offices, banks, and many shops." In the third week, the capital fell and a new regime was installed. The Enemy divided the country into the Western Zone containing the Old City, and the Eastern Zone. A father narrates, in diary style, events that paralleled Eastern Europe during World War II. His family would slowly sink into quicksand as good intentions faded and morals were compromised.

It started with an act of kindness. When the invader requisitioned trains for troop movement, the girl's parents and brother who were visiting in the Western Zone, were unable to board a train back home. Phone lines were cut, postal service suspended. The daughter was left in the care of a "ill-mannered servant" at their wealthy mansion. Our narrator, his wife, and two daughters agreed to host this school acquaintance of the younger daughter until her parents returned.

She was bright and bubbly. "It appeared...that she was completely unconcerned about the fact that the rest of her family were elsewhere and possibly in grave danger...". She was boastful and spoke at length of her family's villa, beside a lake, in the country. "On my salary- I could only provide my daughters with two weeks by the sea.".

Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." The family was between a rock and a hard place. Unfortunately, the girl belonged to "the protected community" whose rights were slowly being compromised. The girl claimed that her parents would reimburse the family for the outlay of money on her behalf. Perhaps employment opportunities would open up. Open ended kindness was not just rooted in altruism.

Desperate times called for desperate measures as days turned into weeks and months. The girl showed no gratitude. Ration cards issued for nourishing a family of four had to feed five. The girl was manipulative and often had temper tantrums. Neighbors became curious and made veiled threats. Self preservation would lead to a lack of moral judgement as the host family became undone. A highly recommended read of historical/ literary fiction.

Thank you Guernica Editions and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of Charles Palliser, and the way his fiction operates on so many different levels – and Sufferance is another sublime example.
Set in an unnamed East European city after Nazi occupation, the (also unnamed) narrator is an ordinary government employee, living an unremarkable life with his wife and two daughters, when one daughter mentions a girl at school whose parents have been stuck across the border, and unable to get back to the city. The narrator and his family decide to take her in, until her family returns.
This is the set up for an extraordinary piece of writing – a parable told in simple language, but with a constant underscore of menace, which grows louder as the book continues. The girl belongs to a community being targeted by the invaders, and this makes the situation increasingly difficult. That so much remains unnamed here (the city, the occupiers, the community) only serves to make the story more sinister – emphasising, as it does, that this is a situation that could arise anywhere, at any time.
Sufferance is a brilliant, devastating novel, which stays with the reader for a long time after the end.

This book was quite different from the ones I normally read but I found it very intriguing. The story was set in WW2, about a family that takes a girl into their home and looks after her who has been separated from her own family during the war.

There were no chapters in this book. It was written very well by the narrator, still horrifying to read.

The family wanted to send the girl back to her own community but so many obstacles were in the way and it became impossible

I found it very strange the girl was ignorant throughout the whole book by the narrator. I really do wonder how it would end

Thank you Netgalley

This was a very interesting read. It takes place somewhere in Europe during World War 2, but the author never specifies the country. In truth it could be many different countries during the war. The narrator is the husband & father of a family with 2 daughters who befriend a young girl left without her parents when occupation takes place. The girls comes to live with the family before her “community” is banished by the new government. The ensuing struggle of what to do with the girl as restrictions on the “community” deepen creates a sinister underlying strain on the entire family. In the end, the father is left with the question “How do I protect the girls while still protecting my family?”

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC!

This is a book that gives you pause for thought.

It starts innoculously enough with the youngest daughter of a family telling her parents about her friend whose family have more or less abandoned her with only a maid in their family home whilst they are away. However whilst the parents and younger brother are gone the country has been taken over by a vicious enemy who, it soon becomes apparent, abhor the community to which the girl and her family belong.

After only a short time the father narrating the book persuades his family that they should take the girl in to live with them. This is not altruism as he believes that when the girl's wealthy father returns home he will be well rewarded for his care of the girl.

As time goes on it becomes clear that the enemy are prepared to go to any lengths to eradicate the girl's whole community and with this comes the knowledge that not only the girl herself but the whole of her "foster" family are now at risk.

Charles Palliser's novel is incredibly powerful. The insidious threat of the enemy, the veiled threats of exposure from neighbours and relations, the increasing tensions within the household all serve to build the pressure within the novel until you find yourself breathlessly turning each page.

I suppose what stands out with this book is the way that Palliser keeps the girl completely ignorant of what is happening in the wider community until almost the end of the book. The tension is ramped up so slowly that you begin to wonder how the story will end.

Truly wonderful but horrifying story telling. Highly recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Guernica for the advance review copy.

Sufferance tells a story about a family that takes in a girl who is separated from her family due to war.

This book is different from most that I’ve read. There are no chapters and it reads like the author is recalling the events from memories to the reader. It is also vague on some details like names, places, and events. It reminds me of events that happened during WWII in Europe.

The narrator is a father of two girls and one of them has a schoolmate whose family is forced to be away from her. The narrator and his family take the girl in thinking that it will be a temporary thing and that her wealthy father will reward them for their kindness. The girl quickly shows her true colors and the family is facing difficult choices with the possibility of dangerous consequences.

This book was very intriguing. The narrator seemed to think he made the morally correct choices but there was always a selfish undertone to the choices he made. I was surprised at how he rationalized some of his decisions. As someone who studies history, I saw how people who were living in Germany occupied areas during the rise of the Nazi party might have done some of the same things.

* Special thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.