Having already tried a book in French for Women in Translation Month, it was inevitable that I was going to get to something in German as well. In fact, I had two books to choose from, and I was planning to go for one by an author I hadn't tried before. However, in the end I opted for the book I'm reviewing today. Why? Well, quite apart from the reputation of the writer, I wanted to talk about a book that the non-German speakers among you will soon have the chance to read too. Now that I've got your attention...
*****
Jenny Erpenbeck's Aller Tage Abend (The End of Days) is an excellent novel spanning the majority of the twentieth century. We start off in Galicia, now the Poland-Ukraine border region, but at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where a couple are mourning the death of their young daughter. The tragic loss of the infant has a devastating effect on the whole family, with the father unable to stay and console his wife - leaving her to support herself by what we can euphemistically call 'other means'. But what if...
...the child never died at all? Having spun out her tale, the writer then drags us all back in time, imagining an alternate history in which the baby is saved from death. And, of course, with the daughter still alive, the fate of the parents and other family members also changes, whether for better or for worse. Resurrect the baby/girl/woman four times, and that's what you can expect from Erpenbeck's latest work :)
It's a fascinating book and a very clever idea, a novel built around the central concept of Was wäre wenn... ('What if...'). Aller Tage Abend consists of five different books, each set in a different period. The five sections look at different times in the central character's life (her name is fairly unimportant and only really appears towards the end of the novel), although it's probably more accurate to say that they deal primarily with her death. With that subject matter in mind, you can imagine that the story has some rather powerful scenes.
Between the five books are four 'Intermezzos', and it's here that time is rewound. As the central character's grandmother notes:
"Sie weiß schon sehr lange, was ihre Tochter von heute auf morgen lernen wird: Am Ende eines Tages, an dem gestorben wurde, ist längst nicht aller tage Abend."
p.23 (BtB, 2014)
"She has known for a good while what her daughter will have to learn overnight: the end of a day where someone dies is by no means the end of all days." *** (my translation)
While the grandmother's words are more in the vein of 'life goes on', in Erpenbeck's world they are taken more literally. We go back and see how other decisions could have been made. One change of heart, one wrong turn, a file moved to the right instead of the left - and suddenly life really does go on. Think of the film Sliding Doors, and you'll begin to get the idea.
While a few themes are evident, particularly the role of women in the twentieth century and the problems of European Jews, Aller Tage Abend is not really focused on any particular area, moving straight from the micro of a personal tragedy to the macro of universality. The book seems to hinge on the fate of one person, showing how things would have been different with and without her. However, the more we read, the more we get the feeling that individuals aren't really that important. History moves on, countries come and go; are people really that important? Life always goes on, even if it's not yours...
The book is actually less about one woman at five different times than about five completely different people. Erpenbeck shows that our life is not a continuum, a flowing stream of life ending in death, but a series of small, potential deaths:
"Zu vielen Zeiten ihres Lebens hat sie irgend etwas für immer zum letzten Mal gemacht, ohne zu wissen, dass es das letzte Mal sein würde. Also war der Tod gar kein Augenblick, sondern eine Front, lebenslang?" (p.226)
"At many times in her life, she had done something for the very last time, without actually knowing that it would be the last time. Did that mean, then, that death wasn't a moment, but a continual, lifelong struggle?" ***
Each day, while connected to the one before, is a brand new day, another twenty-four hours of struggle against the possibility of death.
The observant reader will probably be connecting Aller Tage Abend with another of Erpenbeck's novels, Heimsuchung (Visitation). Of course, the structure is similar, and the two books could almost be read as companion pieces. In one, we see history rooted to the spot; in the other, it moves around in the form of the woman. For me, though, Aller Tage Abend is a much more successful book. Its five sections (plus the Intermezzos) worked much better than the dozen or so parts of Heimsuchung, and each book is very different (monologue, diary entries, narration). Death sometimes ends the section, but occasionally begins it too. While I wasn't a big fan of the first part's detached style, I was enthralled by what came after.
I'm very glad that I decided to choose this one out of the two I bought especially for Women in Translation Month, and (as noted in my introduction) soon you can get your hands on it too! The English translation is out on the 1st of November, courtesy of New Directions (and Susan Bernofsky), and the English title is The End of Days. So, get yourself a copy, and you too can enjoy another great translated novel by a female writer :)
No need to thank me, just doing my job ;)
Although I like to devote a post to each book I read, with the number of books that pass through my hands in a year, that just isn't possible at times. When the burden gets a little too much then, I try to ease the pressure by doing a combined post, usually attempting to twist together two books, often chosen for that very purpose. But what happens when it's time to write up two different, randomly-chosen books together? Well, it's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it...
*****
The Trumpet-Major, regarded as one of Thomas Hardy's minor works, is his only historical novel. It is set during the Napoleonic wars, taking place in Overcombe, a village near the sea port of Budmouth (Weymouth!), on the south coast of Hardy's beloved Wessex. Mrs. Garland and her daughter Anne, gentry fallen on hard times after the death of Mr. Garland, now rent rooms at the back of Mr. Loveday's mill. The days pass quietly, if somewhat tediously, until the arrival one day of a large number of soldiers.
The military are encamped in Overcombe both to protect the coast against any possible invasion by the devil in French attire and to keep an eye on the King during his summer holidays. However, the King is not the only visitor - when Miller Loveday's two sons, Robert and John, sailor and trumpet-major respectively, appear on the scene, Anne no longer has to complain of a boring life...
*****
...but a boring life is exactly what the characters in Jenny Erpenbeck's Heimsuchung (Visitation) would like. The novel is set by a lake just outside Berlin and spans more than a century of local and national history, telling the story of a house and the various inhabitants it receives over the course of its existence. The location is, of course, all important as its position in the heart of the former German Democratic Republic means that just when the house's owners feel settled and secure, a change in the political environment is just around the corner...
Heimsuchung is divided into two sets of alternating chapters: one concentrates on the various people who call the old summer house their own; the other focuses on the one character who stays put through all the upheavals, the taciturn, enigmatic Gardener. By the end of the book, the reader is left wondering just who the house actually belongs to - that is if anyone really can own anything in the long run.
*****
At first glance, these two books may seem very different, impossible to twist together into a cohesive, integrated post. In fact, the two books have an awful lot in common. For one thing, both explore the lives of individuals against the backdrop of a greater historical setting. The Trumpet-Major would be a straight tragi-comic romance were it not for the ever-present threat of a French invasion, a menace which subtly alters how the Lovedays and Garlands interact. It is the possibility of losing one of her suitors on a European battlefield that pushes Anne Garland into casting her reserve aside - and it is a very real possibility. One of the genuine historical events taking place during the novel is the battle of Trafalgar...
This sense of the historical intruding on the individual is also present in Heimsuchung. Many of the people who come to acquire the house live there for decades and expect to live out their days sitting peacefully by the lake. However, the rise of fascism, the coming of the Russians, the beginnings of a Communist state and legal battles of restitution all eventually conspire to drive the owners away. While the house's location may be particularly unfortunate given the hindsight of twentieth-century history, it is a telling reminder that nothing lasts forever...
...which is another concept which links the two novels. As well as the effect of the political and national on the local and individual, both stories also look at how individual lives contrast with time, on a far greater scale. In Erpenbeck's book, there is a prologue which tells of the creation of the lake, describing the advance and retreat of the glaciers in northern Europe, a process which will one day leave a large pool of water next to a fertile stretch of land. This skillful evocation of geological time has the effect of putting all the petty land squabbles which follow into perspective...
Hardy too contrasts the brilliant, but ephemeral, lives of humans with the land that supplies the backdrop to their existence. In one passage, he describes a military parade for the King, a dazzling display of English aggression and style:
"...by one o'clock the downs were again bare... They still spread their grassy surface to the sun as on that beautiful morning not, historically speaking, so very long ago; but the king and his fifteen thousand armed men, the horses, the bands of music, the princesses, the cream-coloured teams - the gorgeous centre-piece, in short, to which the downs were but the mere mount or margin - how entirely have they all passed and gone! - lying scattered about the world as military and other dust..." p.76
In setting his story eighty years before the time of writing, Hardy achieves a distance that allows him, and the reader, to see how small and insignificant life can be, even when (at the time) events appear to be of earth-shattering importance.
*****
Two novels chosen without much thought, two entertaining stories - and, as you can see, I did find a lot to connect the two books :) It just goes to show you that, whatever people may say, when it comes to randomly picking books off a shelf, there's no such thing as chance...
