The Rules of Perspective is set in a provincial German art museum as it is bombed by the Americans at the end of the second world war. The pivotal scene is revealed at the outset: Corporal Neal Parry comes across four corpses seated in the ruined museum’s vaults. There are two men and two women, and they appear to have been killed by heat. A fifth corpse lies on the ground further away. It is evident that some paintings had been brought down here for protection, but all appear to have been destroyed except one. This vivid tableau exerts a powerful tension throughout the book, for the narrative is structured as a counterpoint alternating between the events relating to the Germans beforehand and the aftermath which is seen through Parry’s eyes. As in some paintings, skeins of narrative unravel as the composition is explored.
Herr Hoffer, the museum’s ‘Acting Acting Director’, is found clutching a picture. His sense of responsibility towards the artworks in his care is such that he has left his wife and two little girls in the shelter beneath their apartment block. In the preceding years he has struggled to keep the pictures safe from the depredations of the Nazis, but he will not desert his post now that the enemy have arrived. With Hoffer is Frau Schenkel, his secretary, an unquestioning admirer of Hitler, whose husband and son died on the Eastern Front; Werner, the librarian, who detests the Nazis; and pretty Hilde Winkel. It is like a play: to begin with, these four are as wary of one another as ever, but as the bombardment proceeds and they get more frightened and more conscious that this is the end, years of prejudice and compromise, exhaustion and quiet heroism come to the surface.
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