Book Review
Mar. 13th, 2026 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Lilac People
by Milo Todd
This beautiful novel follows Bertie Durchdewald, a transman who works for Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science in inter-war Berlin. Bertie has a home in the queer community, a close friend in fellow transman Gert, and a good group of friends. He meets and falls in love with Sophie, a woman he meets at the Eldorado club. Then the Nazis come to power and the Institute is raided and shut down, queer and trans people lose the rights they had gained, and everything goes to hell. Bertie and Sophie escape to a farm after the Night of the Long Knives and survive the war by assuming the identities of the elderly farmers who hid them. At the end of the war, Bertie and Sophie find Karl, a trans Dachau survivor, collapsed on their property and work to protect him. Unfortunately, the Allies are imprisoning queer survivors, so Bertie, Sophie, and Karl must escape to America.
The Lilac People was beautiful and extremely moving (or more accurately, a sledgehammer to the feels). I loved it. Bertie, Sophie, and Karl are such real and relatable characters. They are often brave, but not always heroic. Their fear, their will to survive, their grief, and their guilt are all so human and so poignant. Reading this book now, given the way our current fascist government is attacking trans people, felt so immediate and important. This one is going to stay with me for a long, long time.
by Milo Todd
This beautiful novel follows Bertie Durchdewald, a transman who works for Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science in inter-war Berlin. Bertie has a home in the queer community, a close friend in fellow transman Gert, and a good group of friends. He meets and falls in love with Sophie, a woman he meets at the Eldorado club. Then the Nazis come to power and the Institute is raided and shut down, queer and trans people lose the rights they had gained, and everything goes to hell. Bertie and Sophie escape to a farm after the Night of the Long Knives and survive the war by assuming the identities of the elderly farmers who hid them. At the end of the war, Bertie and Sophie find Karl, a trans Dachau survivor, collapsed on their property and work to protect him. Unfortunately, the Allies are imprisoning queer survivors, so Bertie, Sophie, and Karl must escape to America.
The Lilac People was beautiful and extremely moving (or more accurately, a sledgehammer to the feels). I loved it. Bertie, Sophie, and Karl are such real and relatable characters. They are often brave, but not always heroic. Their fear, their will to survive, their grief, and their guilt are all so human and so poignant. Reading this book now, given the way our current fascist government is attacking trans people, felt so immediate and important. This one is going to stay with me for a long, long time.
