Customer Reviews

The Night in Lisbon

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very good book by a very good author. It contains elements of suspense, mystery, intrigue, and romance. It is one of the best novels I've read about the plight of regugees at the outbreak of WWII (with similarities with the first part of Traven's "The Death Ship"). It is the tale told by one refugee to another over the course of a night in Lisbon (hence the title). The narrator is the listener and the story he is told builds into a very good romance that reminded me a lot of the movie "Casablanca". While an endless and exciting series of arrests, escapes and near-misses is going on, we discover a special kind of love between a man who returns to his wife after a number of years of exile. In the topsy-turvy world of Europe at the outbreak of WWII, the standards for conventional romance and fidelity are lost in the need for something more flexible. The reader may question many aspects of the love that is expressed in these pages but not the love itself. I was impressed as I have been with other books by this author. Remarque portrays the chaos of life during WWI as well as Heinrich Boll portrays it in post-war Germany. This is a novel with terrific insight to the times in which it takes place and the capacity for love to prevail against overwelming odds. I'd rate it a 4.5.

Remarque has a gift with words, he can paint a scene so clearly--that it will be forever etched in memory. This novel is a tragic love story that takes place in the beginnings of WWII, and the dialogue has a sense of Hemingway in it. What a beautiful novel to read, my eyes would well up with tears because it was so utterly moving. The novel tackles themes like love, survival, justice, war, identity, and the meanings of life--the two narrators of the story come alive, and I almost felt like I could hear all the emotions and inflections of their voices. But, Remarque has always had a talent--All Quiet..was also a brilliant novel. The back cover of this novel describes the story very very well. The Night in Lisbon is a novel that moves quickly amd brushes you up in its wings; it is a book that can be finished in 2 or 3 days. I highly recommend it to anyone that has discovered Remarque or would want a taste in spellbinding literature. The Night in Lisbon, is a night that I won't forget.

Erich Maria Remarque is an unchallenged master when it comes to describing what happens to people whose lives are disrupted by war. In "The Night in Lisbon" he does this with an intensely personal voice which makes the reader feel oddly present in the scene.Remarque's language is simple and direct, his metaphors and similes provoking and at times startling. In this novel he uses what is basically the rather uncomplicated story of two lovers seeking safety in war-torn Europe to explore a multitude of far more complex themes: the degenerations and transformations of civilizations, the vagaries of perplexing personalities, the roles played by memory and hope in our understanding of the self, and people's varying conceptions of time and eternity, to name but a few. Remarque accomplishes all of this in the swiftly moving pages of an essentially short novel, tells a highly entertaining tale in the process, and, when it is done, leaves the reader's mind tempted with further questions about the compelling characters just left behind. There is some dated material in "The Night in Lisbon", such as the many crude epithetical grenades lobbed in the highly deserving direction of the Nazi dictator and his gangs of thugs and thugesses. Remarque's references in this unrefined vein seem too obviously placed to curry favor with American readers fresh from their own horrific experiences of war and holocaust, and perhaps suspicious of a German novelist and his sypathies. And one might wonder, as some reviewers have, how the narrator might realistically tell his story in the space of one short Portuguese night without losing his voice or simply running out of time before breakfast."The Night in Lisbon" may not belong in the very front ranks of the brilliantly beribboned regiments of world literature, but it remains nevertheless a shimmering and exotic bird which flutters cooly and confidently through the literary skies.One does well to listen to its plaintive cry, to watch its unusual shadow elongate across the fictional landscape, and to ask oneself just why it flies as strangely as it does.

"The (long, long) Night in Lisbon" is an unevenly plotted and an unevenly written story of early World War II refugees fleeing from the increasing, terrorizing horror of the Nazis.

Refugee Schwarz (B. Pitt), as primary narrator, tells his captive audience listener (played by James Franco), the secondary narrator and primary listener, about his harrowing escapes from Germany, Switzerland and France, accompanied through most of the year-long travail by his wife, Helen (A. Jolie), who is a little nutty and very sick. The telling of and listening to the tale takes all night (in Lisbon). The reading of the book takes longer.

This double narrative structure, while quite clever and interesting in theory, is cumbersome and stifling in its execution. But, as is, it would make a great "B" Hollywood movie. Did actress Paulette Goddard, Remarque's wife, influence his thinking for this book, originally published in 1961? At one point, about two-thirds of the way through the story, the "listener" remarked to himself that he was weary of listening to Schwartz' story. This moment coincided precisely with my own feeling of annoyance with the structure of the book and its hard-to-believe escapades.

At times very exciting, the story was often simply too unbelievable -- even for fiction, when ordinarily you're all too happy to suspend belief. Do you really find an abandoned chalet in Southern France in which to crash for days and weeks on end, complete with a wine cellar, vegetable garden and fruit-bearing trees? Or later, a car to steal, full of gas? Or, sympathetic doctors to prescribe morphine (which you locate easily at a pharmacy) for your dying wife? Or, seemingly endless supplies of money and odd jobs to sustain you? And, forced separations from your wife, followed by highly improbable and surprising re-unions? No.

Yes, there are many descriptions, passages of pages-long predicaments and clever life-saving maneuvers that are exciting, heart-wrenching, and filled with real-life pathos, affection and fear. Remarque was a masterful writer. But "The Night in Lisbon" is not - definitely not - the stunning "All Quiet on the Western Front," or his equally sensational "Three Comrades."

Page 44, in a rare, risky passage comparing Christians with Nazis, he insightfully speaks through the story-teller's mouth, "...I was looking upon these same transfigured faces as outside, the same ecstatic sleepwalkers' eyes, full of unquestioning faith and yearning for security without responsibility."

And why do we tell our (all too often) sad, pathetic life story to someone - to anyone, even a stranger? Page 135-136, "...You'll keep it safe, with you there's no danger. Your memory won't try to wipe it away to save you, as mine does to save me. With me, it's in bad hands..."

"The Night in Lisbon," in the end, despite much excellent writing and uplifting philosophy, utilizes too many stereotypes, too many miraculous events (Cavalry riding in to temporarily stave off disaster to prolong the story), and a totally unbelievable man-woman love story, a truly pathetic couple trying and failing to understand each other in time of war, falsely protecting each other with undisclosed secrets.

The end of the book was unsatisfying. Hollywood would do better.

It's a 2.75 on Amazon's rating scale rounded up to a 3. Sorry Remarque.

Forty five years ago I read "All Quiet on the Western Front", and was very impressed by it (as a result, I even snobbishly started to drink Rhein, or Mosel, I forget which, white wines). The present book, which I read some months ago, confirms alas IMO that Remarque wrote only one great story, and this isn't it.

The argument is very sinple: a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany living in Switzerland decides in 1940, five years after his escape, to return to Osnabruck (Remarque's own town) to fetch his wife and flee to the US (even if at the time he's not aware of his resolve to do this). He enters Germany via Austria, sees his wife, and thereafter in the following two years manages, in her company and almost in a fit of absentmindedness, because they almost never know what they'll do next, to reach Portugal via France and Spain (acquiring in the process two steamer tickets to New York and two American visas). All and everything, to paraphrase Gurdjeff, happens to them: encounters with the Gestapo and other police forces and Government officials, numberless flights across hostile regions with documents that don't stand up to careful scrutiny, internment in concentration and other types of camps, train rides and Long Marches, you name it. In Lisbon something happens that dissuades him from further flight, and he gives his tickets and passports to the first stranger who accepts spending a whole night with him to listen to his tragic story, which unfolds in a series of flashbacks.

There are two first-person narrators: the listener (who of course is also a refugee with a wife, broke, with no tickets nor visas, waiting hopelessly for the end) and the non-Jewish German racconteur, who gets the lion's share of the book. It's a very artificial setting, and I don't understand why Remarque should have appealed to it instead of the main character telling his story directly to the reader, a time-honoured device.

Remarque evidently wanted to paint a vast canvas of refugee suffering in 1935/42 continental Western Europe, and in this he succeeds (in fact, not long ago I met a West-European Jew who endured more or less the same misadventures as the novel's main character, except that, being younger, he didn't have a wife). But the narrative is very contrived, full of contradictory details, and clichéed (the invariable Nazis' diabolic but stupid evilness!). For example, somebody wades the Rhine naked, holding his clothes in a bundle above his head, and afterwards sleeps and spends a day in the forest, where he drinks water from a stream and eats some sandwiches he fortunately had. Or somebody, after spending days in a wood hiding from everybody, and therefore presumably dirty, unkempt and bearded, can still fool a camp's guards and pass for a doctor, a mechanic, etc. Or a murdered German official's car travels through France and Spain without anybody detecting it. Or obvious but undetected mortal illnesses come and go.

The husband-wife relationship is completely unrealistic, as is the philosophical and otherwordly bend of the main narrator's thoughts: I think only Walter Benjamin, of Franfurt School fame, might have entertained such.

To summarize, I said above that Remarque succeeds in describing a typical refugee's sorrows: he does, but for ten-year-olds (decorous brief sexual scenes and innuendos excepted).

The story is a compelling one, but the telling is less so.

First the story: The narrator, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe, is in Lisbon seeking passage on a ship to America for himself and his wife. He meets another refugee who, inexplicably but miraculously, offers him two tickets on the ship (and, later, passports and visas) on the condition that the narrator listen to his tale during the night before the ship sails. So the second refugee, "Schwarz", relates in detail the story of sneaking back to his hometown in Nazi Germany (specifically, Osnabruck, which was Remarque's hometown) from exile, presumably for some political offense rather than ethnicity, finding his wife Helen, and then escaping Germany with her and going through numerous travails in trying to get to America, via Switzerland, then Paris, then southern France, and finally through Spain to Lisbon. Through it all, the relationship/marriage of Schwarz and Helen is continually tested and must continually evolve in order to survive. The quest for America and marital harmony ends abruptly in Lisbon; therefore Schwarz relinquishes his tickets to the anonymous narrator.

Now, the problems with the telling and with the novel: The narrative structure of a detailed first-person tale (Schwarz's) within another first-person tale (that of the anonymous narrator) is not handled very deftly; it is overly cumbersome and, to the contemporary reader, unrealistic and outdated. There is far too much melodrama and heavy-handed writing, particularly in the portrayal and condemnation of the Nazis. Schwarz himself is overwrought, much too prone to half-baked, sentimental, romantic philosophy -- a 20th-Century "Young Werther". And Helen is so fraught with neuroses that she too is an unlikely heroine.

When I read "All Quiet on the Western Front", I found it remarkably modern, although some of its anti-war themes are now commonplace. THE NIGHT IN LISBON, though written over thirty years later, seems strangely antiquated. In any event, it does not begin to measure up to the work that made Remarque famous.

This book packed a great story in a short amount of pages. I liked the way the story was presented -- through a speaker. I was sorry finishing this book because I really liked the characters, their unique situation, and will miss them. I also gained an insight on what it must have been like to have been a refugee during World War II. Also there are some powerful "life observations" that are presented to the reader. This book is one of Remarque's best. Highly recommended.

I highly recommend this book to all lovers of All Quiet on the Western Front. It is an enchanting story of love and death set in the late '30's and early 40's during the Hitler years in Europe. Remarque's story conveys the same detached style which makes All Quiet such a powerful condemnation of war. It should be in print- it's that good

For anyone trying to make sense of the horrors of the WWII era, this book offers a narrative which I found thoughtful and helpful. The point of view is that of German refugees displaced by the regime which took over their country. I couldn't put the book down.

We've all been in the situation of being in a restaurant or a bar and overhearing a conversation that has peaked our interest. We strain to hear the whole conversation, the story being woven, perhaps to live vicariously through the narrator or simply because being curious is human nature. Imagine being in that situation only in a different time: the very early stages of World War II, and a different place: Lisbon, Portugal. And, imagine that the person you are listening to is telling his story during this tumultuous time, from a perspective that is often forgotten, from that of a refugee.

This work of fiction is an intriguing tale of a man's struggle to re-enter Germany to find his wife after fleeing for his life about a year prior and then their flight to Portugal to obtain passage on a ship to the United States.

I only read this book after reading Remarque's "All Quite on the Western Front". I was quite disappointed with that work and was left wondering why it is considered to be such a great story. Wondering if Remarque was overrated or truly the great author that I failed to see, I went to the library and checked out what would become my favorite work of fiction. I have since read the book three times and enjoy it as much as the first read each time through it. There are, to me, three elements of "The Night in Lisbon" that make this a great work: the plot, the characters and the style.

When one imagines the plot of a story set in or around WWII, the first thing to come to mind is probably something along the lines of a heroic tale from the front lines or a valiant struggle for survival in the skies over Germany in a crippled bomber. While these tales often lead to great stories, a completely different spin on WWII makes "The Night In Lisbon" unique and intriguing. Remarque's plot revolves around a German refugee not trying to escape because of his religious affiliation but purely for his political beliefs. While it is never clearly explained why our hero is an enemy of the Reich, the reader is able to draw some conclusions from the dialog. It is this man's struggle to re-enter his homeland from which he was exiled to find his young wife and take her back to Portugal with him is what exists as the core of the plot. His journeys through Switzerland, Austria, France and Spain alone and with his wife pull the reader into the book, hoping he and his wife survive French prisons, encounters with German soldiers, border guards and a particularly deadly enemy that cannot be seen. This is truly an involving story that leaves the reader wishing for more once the book is finished.

As with plot, characters and their emotions provide substance to a story. With weak characters and unrelatable emotions, the plot can often become moot. Remarque masters both in "The Night In Lisbon" providing a protagonist (Schwarz) for whom we hope for the best and a tale of love that shows just how strong this emotion can be. The reader can understand how Schwarz feels and his motivation for his actions. Through Remarque's simple character portrayals, he is able to invoke sympathy from the reader towards Schwarz and his wife giving him motivation to see the story through.

Remarque's style in "The Night In Lisbon" is as important to the story as the plot or characters. Simple first-person narrative allows this story to seem more real. Switching between Schwarz's account of his journey and that night in Lisbon in which the story telling takes place makes the reader feel as if he is seated next to Schwarz in the dimly lit bar at 3:00am listening to his account. It is Remarque's mastery of this simplicity and realistic narration that makes this a truly relatable tale.

I cannot recommend this book enough but I fear I am overstating it, as I feel "All Quiet on the Western Front" has been. The only way to know is to find a copy of this book at your local bookstore or city library and read through it at your first available opportunity. I feel you won't be disappointed and I believe this simple tale of love in a complicated time will become an instant favorite. 5 stars out of 5.