Customer Reviews

Accident: A Day's News: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

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I read this book as part of a German Lit. in Translation class. Wolf was by far the best author we read. The book pulls the reader right into the story so you feel like it is happening to you. Wolf challenges readers to think about the way we are treating our world and question whether we are making the right decisions. What is particularly interesting about Wolf is that she is so blunt about the world's problems but she still has hope. The book left a strong impression on me.

Christa Wolf's Accident, A Day's News is a unique view into the mind of the narrator and main character (the German Writer) as she experiences a single day of personal and community crisis. On a personal level, the writer is struggling through the brain surgery of her brother, who lives far away and with whom she "speaks" to throughout the narrative. We experience the writer's relationship in something of a past tense, moments of reminiscence, concern, and wonder. She speaks of their shared past and she expresses her love and concern for her brother, and wonders about his future. Intertwined in that personal crisis is a worldwide concern regarding the after-effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. There is great struggle for the writer as she attempts to navigate this new world, with its warnings about milk and vegetables, and the fear of the great storm cloud that threatens to rain down deadly radiation on all.

Accident is probably one of the most oddly-written books that I have ever read. There is never a clear identification of the characters of the novel, the kind of introduction and details that make the reader care about what he or she is reading. While this stylistic choice may allow the reader to relate with their own lives or may provide a more detailed telling of the narrator's thoughts than others, I found myself at times grasped by the story and other times forcing myself forward. At times, the thoughts of the writer fleeted back and forth as she experienced her day. Once in a while, as she shared them I struggled to figure out why a particular paragraph or idea was included. It seemed that our main character was so preoccupied with her crises that nearly everyone and everything was relevant in the destruction of the man or the world. I often found it very difficult to read this novel while still following the story line and tracking what was happening in the multiple plot lines that seemed to be developing, perhaps in part because I am not fully familiar with some of the other works.

In the end, this novel seemed to be one of those that left more questions than answers. The resolutions are only those that are for the single day's events. We may be informed as to the outcome of the surgery, and perhaps the closing of the day in nuclear wonder, and even the mundane events that seem to occupy our daily lives, but I felt that I had to fill in the blanks about what the future may hold for the writer, her brother, and the nuclear world. At the same time, life is often like the writer's thoughts, with one idea leading to another and the most simple object leading to a memory or idea. Truth be told, most stories leave a good number of unanswered questions; and every ending is merely just another beginning. A new day will follow this for each of the characters of the book, as life presses onward.

German author Christa Wolf's Novella accident: A day's News is a story told by a narrator who questions and contemplates life, death, science and disaster.

Christa Wolf's novella accident: A Day's News is not an easy read, it is hard to follow, and I found myself wanting to put it down rather than pick it up. The basis of the story tells of a person's (sister) emotional frustrations concerning the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and her anger she feels toward the cancer (or tumor) that her brother is receiving surgery for. The two incidents happen to have taken place on the same day and the novella describes in that one day a sisters mixture of emotions, scientific jargon, nuclear information, the medical treatment her brother is receiving and memories of the past.

If you can get past the mixture of the major themes, the sentences that seem to run on forever and the authors tendency to wander from one thought, emotion, or memory (with little connections with between them) the book does have some meaning hidden in there.

I came to the conclusion that the author is exploring the daily things that people take for granted, life being the main focus. One day you are living normally then, the next you have cancer, or you can't eat an egg, drink milk, or even play outside in the rain.

The book Accident: A Day's News is a novella written in first person by Christa Wolf about a day in which the main female character is waiting at home by the phone, expecting a call on the condition of her brother who is in the hospital having brain surgery. Clearly a stream of consciousness piece, the character goes on tangents about her day or something she was thinking about her past in the hope that her brother who is under anesthesia will hear her thoughts. Throughout the book she refers to him as a sort of "Are you listening to me, brother?" type of mind set while she raves about what she is doing at every moment of her day. Though somewhat difficult to follow, the jist of it was something enlightening. As I was reading, I found myself noticing that I also have tangents in my mind whenever I am looking for a distraction whether I'm waiting to hear news about a loved one or if it is something as simple as waiting for my mother to get off of the computer so I can check my emails.

In this sense, the book is very relatable. When put in dire situations, we rattle our minds, looking for any distraction to pass the time. However, most people aren't put in situations that are as dire as her's are made out to be, having just heard of a nuclear accident while her brother is having brain surgery. Mostly, I found the novella to be enjoyable, even though it confused me to the point of frustration in some moments. The reason for my frustration does not deem this a bad read because it is a relatable frustration. Once we are done thinking through something we thought would take longer in an attempt to pass the time, only a few minutes has gone by so something else needs to be in our mind, ever changing topics and ever changing thoughts.

The novella is written in such a style where the thoughts seem jumbled but it really shows the helplessness of the main character as she waits for the phone to ring and hear the news of her brother's surgery. Did he survive? Did something happen that will make him lose one of his senses? Will he remember who he is? So many questions that need to be put to rest in her restless mind. The piece reminds me of another great author, Virginia Woolf. Famous for her bizarre streams of consciousness, Virginia wrote as her mind created the thoughts, and Accident: A Day's News was just so, only easier to follow that Virginia's works. The main point of this writing is to instill that sense of needing to go over every little detail in our minds in order to make the hand on the clock move faster. Her situation is one where I can only describe it as needing a distraction yet being unable to focus on doing anything productive. At times like this--where action cannot be taken and distractions are few and far between--what do we resort to? Thought. One thought leads to another, which leads to another in an endless stream of ideas and memories that consume our time, slowly but surely, until we reach what we have been waiting for. This book was not one of my favorites, but I can appreciate the connection to what really happens in our minds when we are waiting for something we can't push along.

Accident takes a very unique approach to how it presents the story to the reader, however this doesn't seem to do much for the story. I found the novel very difficult to follow along, often times I found myself carelessly rereading a page to try to understand what was going on. Accident takes a very psychological approach to its layout, and incorporates a lot of what you would find in psychology into the book, especially when explaining the parts of the human brain (in which Christa Wolf explains exhaustively).

My major gripe with the novel is in how it chooses to incorporate the story, on one hand we have the central theme where someone is going through surgery, and the much broader scope of the story that revolves around a nuclear meltdown somewhere in Europe, and I say somewhere and not Germany specifically because I never felt a connection to the world the novel attempted to create and nor did I ever find myself reassured that what I was reading was anything solid. The writing is unique in that it rambles to no exhaustive end the extent to which a human being can think, rationalize, perceive, and form judgement, and that's the novels problem. It is no Accident that this style of writing leaves the readers mind exhausted, and drained. What is expected to be a linear narrative about a surgery, nuclear radiation, and death, ends up being what I thought of as a rambling of the mind that leaves readers asking very mundane questions about the novel.

With the above being said however, this is where the genius lies of the novel. Instead of reading another story of misfortune we are instead treated to enter something much more exquisite than a fictional story, we are treated to the endless depths of another persons thoughts. Take this with a grain of salt however because halfway through you will find that there are no concrete recollections of the actual story, and that the reader is instead left with a feeling of being dazed, confused, and irate. Irate for not being allowed the freedom from the burden of the mind of the narration and the damn thoughts that accompany its illustrative narrative. Its ironic then that its most promising feature, the unique writing approach, is hindered by a loss of identity for the main characters. Accident is praised for being a book that delves into psychology and morality but misses one of the most important aspects of these studies, the concept of identity, like giving the central characters names. Morality will teach us that true altruism isn't possible because of our natural egotistical instincts, and Sigmund Freud's study of the superego will lend itself to the credibility of the the former and the roles it plays with how humans construct their perception of themselves, it is because of this that I found Accident to be disconnected with reality as much as it was with its readers.

Accident: A Day's News is a novella that is a very in depth reading of one's consciousness that seems to provide any and all thoughts and emotions felt over one particular day in which a writer is waiting anxiously for news about her brother undergoing brain surgery while at the same time hearing the news that a nuclear cloud is contaminating European milk and vegetables. This particular author uses scientific terminology throughout the novel relating the brain surgery that the brother is under going to the realistic thoughts of the writer. This novel would be particularly hard to follow for someone who can't open their imagination enabling to grasp the hidden plot through the streaming of consciousness of the writer. One reading this type of novel may seem overwhelmed by the constant psychological shift of the analysis of the actual brain surgery and then relating it to each event throughout the day. Throughout the novel a sense of a human's capacity for destruction is mentioned in almost every paragraph. The German writer speaks to hear brother through her thoughts, which makes them hard to follow the meaning behind them because every thought or emotion leads to another action of the day which never seems to have a full grasp of what is happening.

The author uses the brain surgery that the brother is undergoing and each cut of the knife and depth into the brain of her brother's diseased tissue as a question for each section they cut through against her existence of her own life. The author takes you through each detailed moment of the women's accounting of the day such as when she analyzed the zucchini plants growing in her garden, "Seventeen seedlings in right pots" (p 33). She tried to analyze the growth of the plant, which she could not understand. She asked herself "Why did it mean so much to me that the zucchini had sprouted" (p 33)... The tone expressed throughout the novel has a sense of darkness and the fear of mortality. This type of novel would be better read by someone who enjoys the scientific knowledge and nuclear science and medicine. I would suspect that this type of read is for someone who can read between the lines and have the ability to follow. I believe that this novel is geared more towards the older generation and not the younger generation as there is a lot of depressing emotions tied to the thoughts.