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Night Work (2006)

by Thomas Glavinic(Favorite Author)

3.14 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1847670512 (ISBN13: 9781847670519)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Canongate Books

review 1: On the one hand I very much enjoyed this book, although I rather thought the writing lacked style. But since I read an English-version of the original German, this could have been a loss in translation. Even so, I was gripped from the beginning and read pretty much all at one gulp.On the other hand, this story really didn't work for me. My main compulsion in reading it so quickly was to satisfy my curiosity. Why had everyone disappeared? What possible explanation could there be? But as other reviewers have pointed out, you never find out.However, Glavinic is not Kafka. Kafka creates a self-referential fictional world where things can and do happen that are beyond explanation. You accept that you will never know what crime Josef K is supposed to have committed in 'The Trial... more', and that the injustice will not be resolved. You accept this because the true theme of the book is clearly not what Josef K has or has not done, but something else entirely.Glavinic, however, presents a world that is very much our own, only something entirely inexplicable has occurred. And Jonas' complete lack of curiosity about this event is infuriating. He barely speculates on what has happened. Even the rather promising avenue of the antics of the Sleeper is also left largely unexplored. Instead, we're given a series of rather repetitive and frankly not very profound musings on the nature of time passing. More Proust than Kafka, really.I finished 'Night Work' feeling annoyed and frustrated. It neither worked as a story, nor a more metaphysical novel. I was left feeling that, ultimately, it was as vacuous as the world Jonas wakes up into.
review 2: Postmodernism taken to an extreme: the book has an odd premise, nothing happens for a long time, and the reader is left completely in the dark. What makes it especially frustrating is that the novel gives constant hints about what might be going on, but refuses to make answers available. The writing style is nice, and the development of the story is engaging - but without a deeper meaning, it falls flat in the end. less

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