The house is virtually a character in its own right as well as the central place around which the story units revolve. A masterpiece of minimalist architecture, it represents freedom, transparency and light, especially the great open Glass Room, walled on two sides by plate glass, white except for a wall of pale onyx which glows in the late afternoon light. If you like the TV series, you're in for a treat - because the atmospheric but realistic books are even better." The house is completedfor moving in Dec. 1931 (the Villa Tugendhat was actually built 1928 - 1930).Liesel's mother says is is like an office, but L. promotes it as the vision of the future. As the only ornamentation in the Glass Room, Rainier has agreed to add a life-size female torso by Maillol to add a feminine touch—the belly suggests early pregnancy. V. tells Kata of Liesel's proposal, that Kata & Morika come with them for emigration. She challenges his motives and hidden desires, is it Love? He begs her to come. So why start with a shortcoming? Well, the start is as good a place as any to record The Glass Room’s only weakness, which relates to the identity of the family that forms the book’s focus, the Landauers. Victor has married Liesel. He is a rich man, an industrialist, an owner of a firm that makes cars. One would expect such a person to live and breathe his work rather more than he does. Consequently, he always seems less of a character than he surely ought to have been, rather aloof, something of a vehicle for the women involved. So the main criticism of a multi-themed, multi-layered book is that it could have pursued one more idea!

But for me, the interest of the book hinges on the character of Vera. Not your typical hero, especially as a woman. Middle aged (and almost beyond that), unattractive, and abrasive. And in her unassuming appearance, masking her sharp mind and superlative detecting skills, she reminded me a bit of Columbo, another favorite of mine (in fact, she does an equivalent of his casual "Oh, one more thing" after which he pounces for the kill). She irritates her colleagues but she has their (albeit sometimes grudging) respect. She is passionate about her work and while capable of sympathy and compassion for both victims and (sometimes) perpetrators, ruthless in her pursuit of justice. Plus she likes to solve the riddle: who did it? They loved the drama of it, the frisson of fear, the exhilaration of still being alive. People had been putting together stories of death and the motives for killing since the beginning of time, to thrill and to entertain.Z. once broke her ankle, ending enpointe dancing. A woman, Hana, arrives from the Comm. for Architectural Heritage. Z. is 3 yrs younger than Martin. No Jews remain in the city, they are like ghosts. Austria is taken over by the German Reich without resistance (March 1938). Refugees are flowing into Czechoslovakia. The Nazis are 50 km away. V. fears imminent invasion and advocates to L. they emigrate.

A few years later, domestic life includes nurse Liba for the children. V. wants the children to be citizens of the world. Anti-Jewish practices and laws are arising in Germany, Jewish doctors cannot treat non-Jews and new miscegenation laws are in effect, etc. V. is taking note of the future problems this might cause for him if this spreads to his country. His children would be Mischlinger (half-breeds). V. thinks longingly about Kata.The Landauers, a recently married couple, commission German architect Rainer von Abt to build a modern house in Brno (Czechoslovakia). The Landauer House, based on the Villa Tugendhat, becomes a minimalist masterpiece, with a transparent glass room as its center. World War II arrives, and they must flee the country, with their happiness and idealism in tatters. As the Landauers struggle abroad, their home passes through several new owners, with each new inhabitant falling under the spell of the glass room. Europe between the wars is heady in its mix of optimism and foreboding, and both impel the reader’s involvement in this story of the unlikely meeting between a Czech Jewish capitalist and his wife in Venice to a brash and forward-looking minimalist Austrian architect. The result is the Landauer House of the story with its famed der Glasraum. The author adds a note that ”raum” in German means much more than “room”: it also encompasses “space,” “volume,” and “zone” in its expansive meanings. And this is literally what the architect of the novel intended: that outside is in and inside is out and the space and light he captured are the art he intended to achieve.