Customer Reviews

Phantom Pain

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Fantoompijn is the story of Robert Mehlman, a neurotic mythomaniac. Mehlman claims to be a larger than life novelist but as readers we find him at a point in his life where he got caught in a downward spiral. The only book that he can still expect to get published is on the Polish-Jewish Cuisine (in 69 Recipes). Grunberg describes in excruciating detail the adverse impact Mehlman has on everyone in his life. Mehlman the womanizer drags down the women in his life. His son Harpo tries to come to terms with his father's problematic legacy (Harpo's account frames the book). Scenes range from tragicomedy and slapstick to pure madness as Mehlman is looking for cathasis in Atlantic City, Albany and Yonkers. Grunberg at his very best!

I bought a German translation of Grunberg's novel while vacationing in Holland in the fall of 2005 and it quickly became the first favorite book I have had since reading Hesse's "Glass Bead Game"; I've given the English translation as a gift, and have also compared some passages in English, Dutch, and German: these passages are not always translated properly, or even the same way; to wit: the reception of Mehlmann's cookbook by German literary critics is completely spoiled in the English.

Otherwise the English translation captures the dark ironies of the original (or at least of the German translation) and provides a fine study of a functional sociopath riding the waves of fortune with brief moments of empathy that impart a tragic aura to the work.

Blue Mondays and Story of My Baldness are also excellent.