Book Review: The Women at the Pump by Knut Hamsun

When fate strikes badly and turns life completely upside down thwarting all plans, it’s usually a very unsettling experience that can make feel at a loss even the most flexible mind. Some people quickly pull themselves together and take life back into their own hands trying to make the best of the situation, while others give in to despair and just drift on with the current unwilling to set a new course because it just doesn’t seem worthwhile or at least possible. The protagonist of The Women at the Pump by Knut Hamsum, the recipient of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the latter. Having lost one leg in an accident aboard a cargo steamer and unfit to work as a sailor again, Oliver Andersen takes to brooding and idling away his time. Not even for the sake of his growing family, he is able to change.

Book Review: The Golden Hills by Clara Viebig

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We all know moments when we feel like Job from the Holy Bible because nothing goes right and the whole universe seems to be against us. The longer such a spell of bad luck lasts, the more likely it is that we give way to despair although already the wise men of Ancient Greece coined the expression πάντα ῥεῖ – everything flows – knowing that nothing ever stays the same without end (and without hope). In the classical regional novel The Golden Hills by Clara Viebig the vineyards along the Moselle in Western Germany a few years after World War I are the stunning scene of growing misery and desperation. Economic crisis and caprices of weather bring ever more winegrowers in the region on the brink of ruin and even the old Bremm family of Porten is already hard up, when the eldest daughter Maria enters service as a maid in town.

Book Review: Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo

Sometimes it can be just as difficult to understand own behaviour and thoughts as it can be to figure out a complete stranger, not least because we all have traits in us that we like to overlook because we disapprove of them. Human nature wants it that these shadows of our characters terribly annoy us when we recognise them in others, and yet, we seldom become aware that they are actually ours, too. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to explore the unknown, repressed sides of the soul, but his work wasn’t really taken seriously at first. In Trieste of the mid-1910s, the wealthy protagonist of Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo consults a Freudian psychiatrist only because he is curious about this absurd new method and ready to try out anything to rid himself of his (imagined) ailments. Upon the psychiatrist’s request he wrote his memoirs until losing interest.

Book Review: Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

To the outsider, the life of a gentleman farmer on a country estate somewhere not too far from town may look pretty agreeable, if not splendid, and yet, it doesn’t warrant prosperity and happiness. Gentleman farmers aren’t spared the usual sorrows and worries of human existence. They too need to make a living which may be quite a challenge with prices for agricultural products constantly falling on the world market while costs keep rising and regulations getting stricter. They too have families and maybe some of its members give them a hard time. In the classical Canadian novel Jalna by Mazo de la Roche three generations of Whiteoaks live together in the old family mansion of a country estate. The spirited grandmother does her best to live to celebrate her one hundredth birthday, while two of her grandsons bring into the house young wives along with the imponderables of love.

Book Review: Sleeping Fires by Gertrude Atherton

The fire is a strong natural force that turns everything inflammable within its reach into ashes. Most of us see only its destructive power although clearing the ground it lays the foundations for renewal… or resurrection. Sometimes it smoulders beneath the surface unnoticed by us and sometimes it burns gently before our very eyes lulling us into a false sense of security, both literally as well as metaphorically. Sleeping Fires by Gertrude Atherton is the story of a young woman in San Francisco of the 1860s whose husband loves her as a beautiful and pleasant addition to his household, but can’t imagine her to have a mind worthwhile knowing. When a journalist from New York arrives, he brings her mental stimulation in the form of serious books and the opportunity for meaningful discussions that her husband refuses her. And almost unnoticed by themselves, they kindle the fire of forbidden love.

Book Review: Quicksand by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō

The earth under our feet usually feels solid and safe to carry us on our way through life. Sometimes, however, events may raise quite some dust and we can no longer see clearly where we’re heading. At other times, the earth may also turn into mud that makes it difficult for us to advance at all… or if we’re particularly unlucky we don’t just get stuck, but even sink in up to the neck unable to move. The latter is how the young widow in Quicksand by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō feels about the love affair in which she gets caught in Osaka of the 1920s. Wicked gossip spreading at the Art School about her relations to another student whom they believe the real model for her picture stand at the beginning of a passionate lesbian affair with the cunning girl that soon involves also the girl’s fiancé and the woman’s husband.

Book Review: The Artamonov Business by Maxim Gorky

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It‘s only natural (or it should be) that parents want the best for their children and that they try at least to open up for them as many opportunities for a better future as they can. Depending on the social and economic background, starting a business to provide for generations to come may seem a good idea, but a parent’s dream can all too easily turn into the child’s or grandchild’s nightmare if the nature, interests and ambitions of the founder don’t really correspond with those of the descendants or the business environment changes considerably. Set in Russia during the five decades before the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917, the classical family saga The Artamonov Business by Maxim Gorky shows three generations of factory owners as they rise to wealth producing linen and move step by step towards doom because the younger generation lacks entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility to adapt to the requirements of rapidly changing times.

Book Review: The Door in the Grimming by Paula Grogger

Before the industrial revolution small communities in the mountains lived quite isolated from the rest of the world, but in the past two hundred years modern technology, most recently the internet, has constantly brought them closer to the big centres of civilisation. Today they have real time access to all kinds of news and services. In the early nineteenth century the inhabitants of Öblarn portrayed in The Door in the Grimming by Paula Grogger knew that Napoleon was at war with Austria, they had no way of finding out, though, where the French troops actually stood. When fate has it that they come to the remote town in the mountains, wild and rebellious Matthew, the seventeen-year-old eldest son of Constantia, wants to drive them out and gathers like-minded around him. Of course, the fighters are defeated and Matthew flees leaving behind his grieving mother, his younger brothers and fourteen-year-old Regina who has a crush on him.

Book Review: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China by Lu Xun

China is a vast country with an ancient culture, and yet, only few books from the pens (or rather brushes) of Chinese writers have made it into Western bookshops. This is little wonder considering that China has been a Communist country since 1949 and only after the death of Mao Zedong intellectual life slowly reawakened. There are some contemporary authors who have gained international attention, notably the laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 Mo Yan. Among modern classical writers of the twentieth century Eileen Chang may be the best remembered (»»» read my review of Red Rose, White Rose), while others like Lin Yutang or Xiao Hong are quite forgotten today. Notwithstanding that a new English translation has been brought out in 2009, also The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China by Lu Xun have remained secret gems of Chinese literature evoking the 1920s and ancient myths.

Book Review: Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin

The years of the Weimar Republic in Germany between 1919 and 1933 were a crucial period in European and world history. The political atmosphere after World War One and after the abdication of Emperor William II. was such that it prevented people both from coming to terms with the lost war and from developing trust in democracy and the parliamentary republic. Moreover, they were economically hard times that reduced many to poverty and left them in despair because life was only slowly getting better. Set in 1927/28 the German interwar classic Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin shows eighteen months in the life of Franz Biberkopf. He has just been released from prison and is determined to start a new, i.e. an honest life, but he’s a trusting kind of man and can’t understand why life puts obstacles into his way and everybody tries to drag him back into the world of petty crime.

Book Review: The Country Road by Regina Ullmann

For few people life is a bed of roses and even if it appears to be just that in one moment, in the very next moment it can turn to be the complete opposite. It depends on our attitude if we accept the challenge and keep our eyes open for the good and the beautiful surrounding us or if we give way to despair and drown in depression when we realise that nothing in our existence is permanent except change. Set against the backdrop of rural Switzerland and in one case Styria (a province of Austria) in the early twentieth century, the almost forgotten Swiss writer Regina Ullmann shows in her volume of short stories titled The Country Road people who have got to know the ugly side of life all too well and who despite all haven’t lost their ability to see the beauty of the world that makes their being not just bearable but even worthwhile.

Book Review: Five Women on a Galley by Suzanne Normand

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2016 review of a book written
by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The years following the Great War of 1914-18 were a difficult time, not least for women who were forced or wished to earn their own living. During the war many of them worked because most men were away on the battlefields of Europe and somebody had to do their jobs. After the war those men who had survived returned and reclaimed their jobs pushing women back into the roles of wives and mothers. But above all among the young generation there were women who refused to be confined to kitchen, children and church as before. Society made them pay dearly for their freedom as shows the semi-autobiographical novel Five Women on a Galley by Suzanne Normand that is almost completely forgotten today. Set in Paris in the first half of the 1920s – which qualifies it for Paris in July hosted by Thyme for Tea – it surrounds five friends striving for independence and happiness.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig

In his time Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was one of the most famous and most successful German-language writers, but when – despairing at the political situation in his country of origin (he was Austrian of Jewish descent) – he took his own life in Brazilian exile, he knew that he was a relic of The World of Yesterday as he had perpetuated it in his autobiography. The works of the prolific author are classics of literature today and many of them have never gone out of print here in the German-speaking world, but their English translations seem to have fallen into oblivion to be rediscovered only recently. The novella that I’m reviewing today counts among Stefan Zweig’s most important and superb ones. It’s Letter from an Unknown Woman (Brief einer Unbekannten) first published in 1922 and adapted for the screen several times, e.g. one from 1948 directed by Max Ophüls.

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Related content on this blog:
»»» Book Review: Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig
»»» 29 Book Suggestions for the Month of Letter or: Tribute to the Epistolary Novel
»»» Austrians & Their Writings

Book Review: The Man Who Searched for Love by Pitigrilli

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Let’s be truthful, who of us doesn’t sometimes think of the world as a big circus and of people as clowns in it? It suffices to read the headlines of a newspaper or to turn on the TV news to come to this conclusion, doesn’t it? It’s rare, however, that an author takes up the idea in a novel not just metaphorically, but also in the literal sense. Such a novel is The Man Who Searched for Love by Pitigrilli, a humoristic Italian classic from 1929 about a disillusioned judge from Paris who exchanges the courtroom for the circus ring to be a clown in robe and who eventually returns to the law becoming Justice of the Peace at the back of beyond. And along the way he tries to find out what true love actually is living with a philosophical circus-rider.

Book Review: Little Apple by Leo Perutz

According to an old and often quoted saying “Revenge is sweet”, but in reality it’s more likely that it’ll leave a rather bitter, not to say foul aftertaste. Moreover, the wish to restore justice taking revenge for endured suffering, damage or loss very easily becomes blind obsession that will inevitably end in disappointment after having caused pain or even ruin along the way. This is what the young protagonist of the short novel Little Apple by Prague-born Austrian writer Leo Perutz hasn’t yet learnt when he returns to his family in Vienna in autumn 1918. He survived the battlefields of World War I and two years in a Siberian prisoners-of-war camp, he isn’t able to close the chapter for good, though, because he vowed to take revenge for the humiliation, torment and terror that he and his comrades suffered from a sadistic camp commandant. Before long he sets out on a dangerous hunt through half of Europe.

Book Review: The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold

A scene of war is a scaring and depressing place. Often no house remains intact, no field safely arable and it seems impossible that the old hustle and bustle of life can ever return. These days we see it in Syria and other regions less present in the media, but not so long ago great parts of Europe were in ruins. Certain areas of France and Belgium were destroyed twice within less than half a century! Today many of the battlefields – what a harmless sounding word compared to German “Schlachtfeld” that has slaughter in it! – are well-kept places of remembrance, while they were nothing but craters and rubble right after World War I and II. The English novel The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold evokes the atmosphere of winter 1918/19, the first of peace after four years of carnage, through the eyes of a young woman driver in the service of the French army.

Book Review: Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel

Summer days are long in the North, but unfortunately where there is light there is shadow too. The more reviving and cheerful the warm season may be close to the Arctic Circle the more dazing and depressing the cold and dark winters can be. For the teenage protagonist of Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel the pleasures of summer are few and too quickly past to make her forget the chill and the dimness of winter which use to weigh heavily on her soul. However, it’s not just the inclement climate in one of the northernmost towns of Norway that makes Alberta feel miserable. The always tense atmosphere at home, constant pecuniary troubles and the necessity to keep up the appearance of a happy bourgeois family in a small town add to her increasing desperation that separates her from her family and society altogether. 

Book Review: Mr. Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Today is Good Friday and I thought that this might be the right moment to feature kind of a Christian read. The protagonist of the novel that I picked for my review is an Protestant missionary on a remote islet in the South Seas, but the plot revolves less around religion than it is about love and the harm that the influence of western civilisation can do, especially in combination with the belief in its supremacy. The topic undoubtedly is a serious one, and yet Mr. Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner isn’t a stern book at all. It’s a satire of missionary zeal to convert the savage to true faith and western life-style. The novel is set before the Great War of 1914-18 when there still were untouched spots on our planet, thus long before the world had shrunk to the size of a computer screen.

Book Review: Midwinter by John Buchan

Sometimes a book title can be quite misleading like in the case of the novel which I’m reviewing today. As you know, the reading list for My WINTER Books Special has kept me busy for weeks now and for containing the word “winter” in the title Midwinter by John Buchan has been on it from the beginning. Although the historical novel is clearly set in the winter of 1745/46 (thus of the Jacobite rising), its title doesn’t refer to the time around winter solstice as might be expected. Much rather it’s the sobriquet of a mysterious character appearing ever again in the story and helping the protagonist Alastair Maclean who is a captain in the Scottish army and committed to the Jacobite cause with all his heart. Coming from France he is on his way through England to join Bonnie Prince Charlie with important news, but he moves on enemy territory and even supposed friends soon turn out to be foes.

Book Review: Winter Sonata by Dorothy Edwards

Just as fiction often serves composers as a source of inspiration music stimulates the imagination of many authors. Several works of literature owe their titles to music pieces that had an important part in their creation, be it bringing the idea of the story or arousing the desire to pay them homage. Sometimes writers with expertise in music even venture at transposing musical form into fiction. For today’s review I chose one such work that was written following the rules of composition, namely Winter Sonata by Dorothy Edwards. In it the almost forgotten Welsh writer tells the unspectacular story of a young man who moves to a remote village for the winter hoping to stand a better chance there than in town to keep the illnesses of the cold season at bay.