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Di Passaggio (2008)

by Jenny Erpenbeck(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

8895538617 (ISBN13: 9788895538617)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Zandonai

review 1: Jenny Erpenbeck, Heimsuchung190pp.(English rendition: Visitation, transl. by Susan Bernofsky)The title is a play on words (which combines the idea of a 'visitation' (perhaps by the plague or similar) with the idea of 'seeking a home') which is lost (as so many things inevitably are in translation) in the title of the English language version.This work terms itself 'Roman' (novel), although that assertion is open to debate, if one accepts the premise that a novel is marked by 'Weltgehalt'. What the reader is in fact presented with here is a series of glimpses into the biography of a building, of a house, and repeatedly over the course of the troubled 20th century of a home. This 'novel', as it altogether unjustifiably terms itself, is unsettling in as far as it argues that... more what we small humans term 'home' (a pile of bricks and cement) and to which we attach the desperate anchors of our emotional ties is indeed commonly nothing more than a pile of bricks and cement. Erpenbeck's prose is subtle, restrained - even the horrific mass murder of the Jews and the opportunism spawned by National Socialist anti-Semitism drips only unobtrusively like the imperceptible movement of (coloured) slow-glass - and non-judgemental and is for that very reason bearable in the face of the cruel century Erpenbeck seeks to describe. If life is indeed nothing but a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, then this book confirms that notion in the soullessly empty final destruction scene in which the house, around which the biographies of Jews, Nazis and GDR citizens have played, is pulled down, signifying the vanity of human life and the tenuous nature of our brief bursts of happiness until we are heard no more.This is a sensitive, pensive and persuasive book. This is a worthwhile book. But a 'novel' it most certainly is not.
review 2: I am a little bit annoyed with "Heimsuchung" but at the same time I think it is sort of good. The idea of presenting German history by giving short chapters of the people living in a lake house over the good turn of a century is something of a gimmick if you pin it down, yet one that works. The contrast to the slow moving nature progress in the Gardener chapters is a bit less impressive to me but Erpenbeck undeniably created something unique and worth checking out in these mere pages, it is actually kind of fascinating how much she was able to put into 190 pages. I didn't really warm up to her prose though, cold and and with insisting repetitions it feels detached (and purposefully so) from the events. Again, I thought it was too obvious what the writer was doing here but I am not denying that it has impact on the reader.An interesting little book that I didn't always like but which still managed to lure me in, probably read best in one single setting or with very slow progress chapter by chapter (that's how I did it). The not translatable German title is a beaming bonus cherry, and it is getting more meaningful the more the story progresses. less

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