Of some interest to students of postwar literature in German.
Neurasthenic tale of cigars and suicide by Swiss writer Burger.
“Distinctions collapse, existence has no feeling of proportion with regard to death, when your number comes up, it’s best to just slink off without disturbing anybody’s sleep….” So thinks Burger’s protagonist, heir to a minor cigar empire in a quiet corner of the Aargau—quiet, that is, until, having decided that there’s no point to keeping a healthy savings account given the nearness of death, he buys a “rossa corsa Ferrari 328 GTS with a removable hardtop and a maximum speed of 166 mph.” Not much happens in the book, though a cigar aficionado will learn a great deal about different kinds of tobacco, means of storage (“The cigar must be stored at the proper humidity, sixty to sixty-seven degrees is ideal, and sheltered from abrupt changes in temperature”), and additives that “impart the right aromas” to the tobacco. Add to that occasional disquisitions on the peculiarities of alpine weather, and Burger’s encyclopedic leanings are given room to roam. Burger’s smoke-filled narrative, each chapter headed by a different brand of cigar, is at its best when it’s at its most Proustian, a stogie triggering a memory and with it a philosophical observation, whether a defiant defense of smoking (“a privilege of the mind and of the senses”), a takedown of psychiatry (“Analysis—and this is the perfidy of it—robs us of our myths”), or a Susan Sontag–esque meditation on depression, which Burger calls a metaphor that allows the afflicted to proclaim, “This is how miserable I am!” It adds up to a slog of a tale that makes any given Dürrenmatt work look like a light comedy. The translator is to be commended, however, for his innovative rendering of Burger’s mix of Swiss German with Hochdeutsch, the former signaled by outlandish phrases in italics such as “he ken turn eh fine phrase too.”
Of some interest to students of postwar literature in German.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953861-30-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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