In an autumnal love story of erotic obsession, possessiveness, remembrance, oblivion, and time, an elderly woman dwells upon a failed love affair of some time past, when she was no longer young but not yet old. The narrator relives meeting her lover, Franz, at the natural history museum, when, for the first time in her life, she experiences all-consuming love and absolute happiness. Ultimately the affair founders because of her inability to believe that Franz will actually leave his wife. After he disappears from her life, she withdraws from the world, waiting for his return and revisiting their time together over and over in a never-ending cycle of obsession. Her love for Franz becomes a compulsive suffering from which she can neither free herself nor withhold anything.
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Maron's disturbing but erotic novel of remembrance takes the form of the haunting recollections of an elderly woman. Raised in repressive East Germany shortly after World War II, the nameless heroine earns a paleontology degree, marries, and has a daughter. Years later, when the Berlin Wall comes down, she meets Franz, a scientist from West Germany who has come to work at the museum where she is employed. Their affair is passionate, and she abandons her family. When Franz is accidentally killed by a bus after a lovers' quarrel, she shuts herself up in her tiny apartment, torturing herself with guilty memories of their affair. Maron uses her heroine's descent into insanity as a framework for exploring the role that memories play in our identity, and the power we have to reshape ourselves by rewriting the past. Examining the relationship between passion and our instinctive animal selves, Maron demonstrates how we can allow ourselves to be driven by love to defy both social rules and our own natural instinct for survival. Bonnie Johnston
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Maron's exquisite language, highlighted at times by lyrical flourish, retains much of its splendor in English, thanks to the fine translation by Brigitte Goldstein. -- The New York Times Book Review, Noah Isenberg
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Book Changed My Life,
By Nicoleigh (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Animal Triste (European Women Writers) (Paperback)
I cannot praise this novel highly enough. It taught me how to love without regret and savor the moments that make life worth living. Though originally written in German, the translation is flawless. Every single sentence is a well-crafted masterpiece worthy of quotation. Maron is able to do what so few authors can: create a story that is inexplicably human -- one to which almost anybody who has experienced love can relate.
The relationship between significant others and the construction of identity is central to the narrator's characterization. After an enthralling love affair with a married man, the narrator develops a hopeless fixation with him and is incapable of fully living life in his absence. The unreliable first-person narration gives the reader insight into the many layers of this obsession -- from selective rememberance of their time spent together to her need to preserve the most inane remnants of their relationship long after its demise. Through the use of her lover in shaping her existence, the weakness of her personality is revealed piece-by-piece as a jumbled collection of haunting memories. Conclusion: read this book. I promise you will not regret it. (Und besser auf Deutsch! Ich las und liebte das Buch auf beiden Sprachen.)
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