Rate this book

Alice (2009)

by Judith Hermann(Favorite Author)

3.43 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

3100331826 (ISBN13: 9783100331823)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

S. Fischer

review 1: AliceBy Judith HermannAlice is the central character in five linked stories, each of which captures her at a moment of loss. In one story, Alice is summoned by the wife of a former lover to the town where he lies dying. In another, Alice and two companions go visit an older man and his wife at their home in the lake country of northern Italy. The visit is expected to be a holiday. Instead, as Alice arrives, he falls ill and dies unexpectedly. In a third story Alice contacts the former lover of her gay uncle, who died by suicide, in hopes of understanding why she was deprived of knowing this man. And then Alice’s own husband dies—how and why we do not know. We learn that Alice’s mother too has died but she does not get her own story—all the losses are of men... more important to Alice. One by one, they die, leaving Alice to absorb what they meant to her life and to puzzle out how she can go on.These stories are full of mysteries the reader cannot solve. Who are the two older men? Why were they so important to Alice? Who is Alice, really? What does she work at? How old is she when these losses happen? The author will not tell us. Instead she puts us in a moment of intensity that is precisely described, understated and thus bearable. For the real mystery here is the fact that life ends for everyone, and the stories convey this in a prose at once cool and deeply moving. When Alice meets with her uncle’s former lover, she finds that the lover never cared as deeply about anyone else. He gives Alice her uncle’s letters and walks away. Alice goes back to her car only to find it has been towed. “Gripping the bag containing Malte’s letters, she walked up the stairs to the train station. And now what? Read the letters right away or later or not at all? It didn’t matter what was in them—it wouldn’t change anything. But it would add something—one more ring around an unknowable permanent centre. Alice tightened her hold on the bag of letters. I am, after all, one of many, she thought, losing herself in the splendid, cold and wintry hall of the train station among so many others, and all the many possibilities of travelling here or there.”Everyone has had the same experience as Alice, or will have, and the stories break in upon that loneliness—not to heal what can never be healed, but simply to recognize it. In this way the stories break down the loneliness in which each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, must live. Margot Bettauer Dembo’s masterful translation gives Judith Hermann’s prose an English equivalent with the same grace and spare subtlety as the German. This is a real service to English-speaking readers, few of whom would otherwise have access to this luminous work.
review 2: In ALICE, her most recent book available in English *), Judith Hermann takes an unusual approach to portraying her central character: through five more or less independent stories, placing Alice into the centre of each, the author explores different kinds of confrontation with death and loss. While Alice is, or was, personally connected in some way to each of the five dying men, she appears to prefer a secondary role, assisting those whose grief is more immediate and palpable. Each story captures a moment in time that brings Alice back in contact with a former lover, a family friend, an older mentor (?), even the memory of a long dead uncle. Is this a cover for her way of coping with loss and death or is she really that remote from the person dying? Do these four experiences prepare her for the loss closest to her? Can we get a sense who Alice is? Does it matter or does she stand for many who have experienced loss through death of a loved one?Told in an unassuming and quiet and even detached voice, Hermann is very sparse in her depictions of the dying and the grieving individuals at the centre of each story. She only gives away little, brief glimpses of her relationships to the men and the other women. With each storym though, we can get a bit closer to Alice and how she approaches grieving: through keeping busy and being useful and helpful to others. Wherever the story is set - the majority in Berlin - Hermann uses the description of place to give Alice (and the reader) a tangible precise environment and a kind of grounding in mundane reality that in the face of an unexpected death may otherwise totally disappear. This juxtaposition of unpreparedness for an impending drama is especially well illustrated in the story, CONRAD, set around a villa on the shores of beautiful Lake Garda in northern Italy. Conrad, presumably a fatherly friend, had invited Alice and her friends to visit him and his wife Lotte at their Villa at the Lake. This is one story with more explicit emotional depth than we find in the others where Alice's distance, her preoccupation with practical matters hides her own sadness and grief. The story MALTE touched me particularly deeply. Alice who only knew her uncle from hear-say finally discovers who he really was when meeting an old friend of his. The last story centres on the person closest to Alice and focuses on her efforts to survive into the day-to-day. It is also the only story that touches on protagonists from the other stories and in that sense provides "closure" in more ways than one.Not everybody will relate to this book. For some, Alice might appear too remote; it might feel unsatisfactory that she is not able to express her emotions directly or visibly. On the other hand, for other readers like me, Hermann's writing touches in many ways, mostly indirectly, on emotions and atmosphere as she explores Alice's grief and sense of loss. Alice stands for many of us.*) I read the book in German. Apparently, the translation captures Hermann's language very well. less

Download links for: Alice

Advertising