Tamar Shapiro’s Restitution is a thought-provoking exploration of how personal pain cannot be resolved through retribution but may be to some extent assuaged by empathy. The novel follows two siblings, Kate and Martin; although they grew up in Illinois, their mother Lena fled East Germany in 1953. When the Berlin Wall falls, Lena suggests that the three of them, along with her sister Laura, visit their childhood home in Grimma, a village in central Germany that was, as Kate explains, given to “the Soviets in keeping with faraway negotiations and agreements.” While Lena hopes that the trip will draw the family together, the siblings’ relationship deteriorates as they clash over Martin’s entitled belief that they should reclaim their family’s former house.    
While Restitution primarily takes place in the months immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall, it also flashes back to the siblings’ visits with their German grandparents in the 1970s, and it flashes forward to 2005, when Kate and Martin reunite after a thirteen-year estrangement caused by their arguments about the house. Much of the story’s conflict revolves around whether the family should seek restitution. Kate, who doesn’t know what restitution is before traveling to Grimma, discovers that the process involves the “return of properties […] that people had lost through expropriation or because they’d had to flee the East.” While Lena is eligible for restitution because she and her family had to flee their home and enter one of the “facilities set up to process refugees from the East,” Martin and Kate realize that they are also allowed to seek restitution simply because they are her descendants. 

Initially, Kate’s family only wishes to see Lena and Laura’s former home, which is occupied by an elderly couple. The husband, Klaus, is taciturn, but his wife, Greta, is “chatty and open,” and she happily shows Kate and her family around the house. While Kate and Martin expect her to vilify life in East Germany, she surprises them by describing Grimma as a place of community. Laura and Lena aren’t bothered by Greta’s assertions, as Laura agrees that the village fostered a “sense of belonging,” but Martin is incensed by Greta’s point of view. He feels that her contentment minimizes the suffering his family endured. Furthermore, Martin, wary of Klaus’s aloofness, assumes he’s “being cagey” because he knows Kate’s family could “claim the property” via restitution. Martin then suddenly demands that Lena seek restitution for the house, a suggestion that she and Laura find baffling, as neither wishes to live in Grimma.   

Whereas Kate is mindful that seeking restitution would displace Greta and Klaus, Martin is indifferent because he believes his family’s suffering is paramount. Throughout the novel, Martin sees the world in absolutes. For instance, he believes that someone informed on their grandfather, which triggered the family’s subsequent difficulties. Laura and Lena explain that their father could have been targeted for many reasons, like helping neighbors and confronting a Party leader. But when his grandfather’s friend Krista shares that the town suspected a young man may have been an informant, Martin pressures her to point a finger at Klaus in order to justify reclaiming the house. 

For Martin, restitution is a way to guarantee that “actions have consequences.” But as Lena observes, her father was not entirely innocent either. As Lena tells Martin in a moment of frustration, her father was “not the only one who had it hard” and not “the only one who’s owed something.” Though he suffered under the Stasi (the East German secret police), he was willing to look away from others’ pain during World War II. Elaborating, Lena explains that although her father “never joined the Nazi Party,” the “war was taboo” because her father didn’t feel personally affected by it. In revealing this, she hopes that Martin will understand that he’s idealizing his grandfather in his quest for vengeance.   

The novel’s interest in moral complexity is its greatest strength, and it astutely frames conflicts as diffuse, rather than discrete. The plot’s structure reinforces this diffusiveness, as it’s conveyed mostly through the stories that Kate and Martin hear about their family. Each villager knows some, but not all, of the reasons why their grandparents fled. On a technical level, this means that the plot leans more on “telling” rather than “showing.” But on a thematic level this structure works well. The people in Grimma are grappling with their own pain, as Germany’s sudden reunification imperiled their jobs and upended notions of ownership. As Krista reminds Martin, even Greta and Klaus have suffered. The couple’s “whole life has changed already,” and they may be forced from their house through no fault of their own. 

While Martin refuses to acknowledge the couple’s pain, Kate deeply empathizes with Greta because they’ve both suffered child loss. When the novel begins, Kate is recovering from a miscarriage, something that both her mother and Martin mostly ignore. But when Greta shows Kate photos of the house, Kate sees “a small stone marker, a memorial of some sort.” Eventually, she realizes it’s a gravestone for Hanna, Greta’s daughter who died in infancy. When Kate returns to Illinois, she writes a letter to Greta about her own miscarriage. Greta replies by describing child loss as “a scar on the heart,” an image that brings Kate comfort. After months of exchanging letters, Kate gains the courage to have another child, a daughter she names Hannah. Their bond allows Greta to make “a simple entreaty, a plea to withdraw the claim.” When Kate asks Martin to reconsider, he refuses because he still wants vengeance, so Kate stops speaking to him. 

As Shapiro skillfully demonstrates, though, retribution is rarely freeing. Martin pursues the lawsuit even after Klaus dies, something that Kate finds abhorrent. A year later, Lena tells Kate that Martin dropped the suit when he discovered that Klaus’s grandson, Arlo, was “thirteen or fourteen,” roughly the same age Martin was when his own grandfather died. From this, Kate deduces that Martin identified with Arlo, whose grief for Klaus finally let Martin address his own. Kate’s insight into her brother’s feelings softens the division between them. As they finally reunite, Restitution reminds readers of empathy’s restorative power.    

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Tamar Shapiro was raised in the United States and Germany and now lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, two children, and the world’ s best dog. While writing Restitution, Shapiro attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Program and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A former real estate attorney and non-profit leader, she is a 2026 MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia. Restitution is her first novel.

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Emily Hall is a freelance writer whose work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, places such as Portland Review, Passages North, Cherry Tree, Blood Orange Review, The Plentitudes, and 100 Word Story. She is a prose reader for West Trade Review and holds a Ph.D. in contemporary Anglophone fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in North Carolina with her husband.