Customer Reviews

The Post-Office Girl (New York Review Books Classics)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

. . . and in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hel l I suffer seems a heaven."
John Milton, Paradise Lost

There are some books that you can finish, put back down on the table and five-minutes later have it virtually erased from your consciousness. Stefan Zweig's "The Post-Office Girl" stayed with me long after I put the book down. It is a brilliantly crafted book that looks at the mind-boggling despair that can crush the soul out of just about anyone. What makes the book memorable is the fact that Zweig does not write with an overwhelming appeal to pathos. No, instead, Zweig is direct and his narrative manages to convey this sense of despair without drowning the reader in rhetorical devices aimed at soliciting sympathy for his characters.

The setting is post World War I Austria in the 1920s. The Austro-Hungarian empire has been dismantled after the Treaty of Versailles and Austria, like her ally Germany, is suffering the `economic consequences of the peace'. The Post-Office Girl is Christine Hoflehner. At the war's outset, Christine and her family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class existence in Vienna. But the war and the economic suffering brought on by the hyper-inflation of the 1920s has booted Christine out of Vienna and her middle class life. She and her mother live at the poverty level in a one-room bed-sitter in a village two hours from Vienna. Christine works as a low-ranking postal official in the town's post office. As the story opens she's in her 20s and merely going through the motions. But her robot-like existence is shattered when she receives a telegram (a big event) from an aunt, her mother's sister, who left Austria before the war and married a rich American businessman. They invite Christine to spend a holiday with them in a Swiss mountain resort. Christine goes grudgingly but is astonished at the life she is exposed too. Her aunt buys her beautiful clothes, feeds her well and all of a sudden Christine is exposed to a life she never knew existed. She takes to it immediately. She relishes her new life and cherishes every minute of it. But no sooner has she found a new life than she is tossed back into the old one. Any despair Christine may have felt before her Swiss trip is now magnified by the fact that she has actually seen how different life can be. She arrives at what she thought was the lowest deep only to discover that there are depths of despair yet to go.

It is at this point that she finds Ferdinand on a day trip to Vienna. For Ferdinand life has been, if anything, more unkind to him than to Christine. Their meeting and their developing relationship takes us through the second half of the book. They know they are soul mates but their existence is such that they each know that love (if you can call their fumbling attempts at personal physical and social intimacy love) is not nearly enough to be of any help to them at all. They face the question posed by Milton in the heading of this review - which way shall they fly? Zweig's resolution is, in this context, perfect.

What Zweig has done so well in my opinion is to use Christine and Ferdinand as a masterful vehicle for looking at Austrian (and Europe generally) society in the aftermath of the Great War. Zweig's characters are well crafted and felt very realistically drawn to me. They were absorbing, warts and all. "The Post-Office Girl" was well worth reading and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in reading a book that lingers with you after you are done. L. Fleisig

The Post-Office Girl is fastpaced and hardboiled--as if Zweig, normally the most mannerly of writers, had fortified himself with some stiff shots of Dashiell Hammett. It's the story of Christine, a nice girl from a poor provincial family who gets a taste of the good life only to have it snatched away; and of Ferdinand, an unemployed World War I veteran and ex-POW with whom she then links up. It's a story, you could say, of two essentially respectable middle-class souls who wake up to find themselves miscast as outcasts, but what it's really about, beyond economic and psychological collapse, is social death. Set during the period of devastating hyper-inflation that followed Austria's defeat in 1918, Zweig's novel depicts a country grotesquely divided between the rich and poor, so much so that it has effectively reverted to a state of nature. Christine and Ferdinand and Austria have been hollowed out (even if the country is still decked out in the pomp, circumstance, and pointless bureaucratic regulations of its bygone imperial heyday). They exist in a Hobbesian state of terminal desperation from which--the discovery arrives with mounting horror and excitement--the only hope of escape or redemption lies in violence.

Zweig wrote The Post-Office Girl in the early 1930s, working on it during years that Hitler rose to power and that saw Zweig, as a Jew, forced into exile. He appears to have considered the book finished, and yet he left it untitled and made no effort to publish. Why? My own hunch is that it was just too close to the bone. Zweig was famous all over the world as a writer of fiction and non-fiction and as a public intellectual. He was, you could say, the standard bearer for a certain liberal ideal of civilization, for a way of life that is worldly, compassionate, cultivated, tolerant, sensitive, self-aware, and reflexively touched with irony; the life of, as he considered himself, a man of taste and judgment. In the face of Nazism, such an ideal may have come to seem so much wishful thinking, and certainly Zweig, in exile, found his whole reason for living undercut. This, it seems to me, is the trauma that The Post-Office Girl registers. It accounts for the raw power and relentlessness of the book, for its difference from his other work, and also, I imagine, for Zweig's uneasiness about it. He couldn't put it or the reality it describes in perspective. I don't think that it's an accident that The Post-Office Girl, though finished in the mid-30s, finds Zweig rehearsing a scenario for suicide that clearly anticipates his and his wife's deaths in Brazil in 1942.

Found among Zweig's papers after his death, The Post-Office Girl did not appear in German until 1982, when it was published as Rausch der Verwandlung (a phrase taken from a crucial early episode in the novel, translatable as "the intoxication of metamorphosis"). Zweig's letters refer to his "post-office girl book," and we have chosen to follow this lead. An equally good title, also true to the book, it strikes me now, would have been "State of Shock."

--the new york review of books.

While Stefan Zweig's greatness as a writer has never diminished in Europe, he is much less known than he should be in the US. His novels as insightful, psychologically penetrating, and often charged with emotion. The characters in Zweig's fiction are often in a state of crisis: honorable people who have blundered into an impossible situation (or been thrust there by the forces of society). Zweig's ability to see deeply into the workings of the human psyche shouldn't be too surprising: he was, after all, a close personal friend of Sigmund Freud. "The Post-Office Girl" (a remarkably prosaic title for a book Zweig called "Intoxication of Transformation") is a late work, and remarkably bitter. Zweig often wrote about the impact of World War I on European culture, and in this work we get a male and female perspective on the hideous poverty that occurred in Austria after the War. Both of the main characters have been screwed by life. Christine lost her father and brother during the war, and ends up in a dead-end job, taking care of her ailing mother. She doesn't seem to realize how miserable her life is until a wealthy aunt offers her a vacation in Switzerland, and she sees what she's been missing. Returning to her drudgery, she's furious with the inequality of life, and when she meets Ferdinand, an equally angry veteran who has been struggling to get by since returning from a prison camp in Siberia, the two form an instant connection. Zweig uses Christine and especially Ferdinand to provide himself with a voice to lay bare the horrors of war, and the crushing burden that economic inequality creates. The self-absorbed, wealthy people Christine encounters on her vacation are played in high contrast to her petty bourgeois brother-in-law. It's hard to say which is more memorable: Zweig's depiction of the lavish splendor of Christine's vacation, or his gritty, realistic descriptions of the cheap cafes and flea-bag hotels where Christine and Ferdinand spend their time. What he does document brilliantly is the Austrian mindset of embitterment after World War I. After all, it was from that mindset that Adolph Hitler would rise to power, on a message of hope for working class people to again rise up out of their depths.

I only review a fraction of the number of books I read, so I don't give this compliment lightly.

Summary, no spoilers:

Let me start off by saying that it is difficult to give a good review of this book without slight spoilers - but I will do my best and try to still give a flavor of what makes this such a memorable read.

This *gorgeously* written novel starts off with a brilliant description of a desolate country post office in Austria, in 1926. Working in this depressing bureaucratic hell, is a 28 year old woman named Christine, who has been beaten down by poverty, dullness and tedium in her life.

Christine had a much different childhood; her family had substantial means and lived comfortably, and she grew up a happy and content child. But all changed with the Great War, and they, like so many other Europeans, lost everything. All that remains to Christine is her job with the post office, and taking care of her sick mother in a depressing and decrepit attic room.

She is devoid of hope, and that is part of the key to this fantastic story.

While toiling at the post office, Christine gets a telegraph message from her aunt in America - a woman she's never met. The wealthy aunt offers her a vacation at an expensive and elegant Alpine resort. Christine immediately runs to her mother to find out if this is real, and her mother explains that it is, and that her sister (the aunt) wanted her to go, but that she couldn't because she couldn't travel and that she should take Christine.

Christine, utterly flummoxed by the thought of any change in the dull routine of her life, packs her small straw suitcase, and takes a train to meet her aunt.

The description of Christine's arrival at the hotel are priceless and brilliant. Christine is overwhelmed by the beauty and by the elegance of everything, and she is like Cinderella at the ball. Her aunt (and uncle) are good to her, and dress her in beautiful clothing and have her hair cut in the latest elegant fashion, and have her face made-up. The scene reminded me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie - being primped and taken care of from every angle.

Christine is so excited, and so astounded at her ability to feel anything but sadness and tedium, that she cannot sleep for the first night. She feels like her eyes have been opened to the beauty of the world, and she wants to take it all in.

This is all from Part One, of this two part novel. If you want absolutely no spoilers, don't read on (and don't read the back cover of the novel) - although I recommend that you do and that it won't take away from your enjoyment of this novel. For me, knowing a little bit in advance only enhanced my reading experience.

Part Two is a far different story, although it takes place immediately afterwards. Christine, like Cinderella, has been returned to the hovel, but now it all becomes unbearable because she has experienced and seen the other side.

Christine befriends a man named Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran, who shares her world-view and despondency. They try to see each other and have a relationship, but this is not easy in post-war Austria, when one doesn't have any money or means. But they make plans...

There are so many things to love about this book - number one being that it's just so beautifully written. There are paragraphs that I read over and over again, just because of Zweig's ability to string words together to get across a feeling or an idea or a description are just so perfect. And yet this is a translation, to boot! It makes me want to learn German, just so I could read this in its native language.

Secondly, this is an astute novel about what it's like to live without hope, and what happens when someone who has nothing is given this chance to see what the good life is like, and then have it taken away from them. Is it better not to have been given this chance at all?

Needless to say, this novel is highly recommended. I also highly recommend another NYRB Classic release, "Beware of Pity", Zweig's first novel released under this label. He is fast becoming my favorite author, and I hope that all of his books and stories become available in English. Sadly, he and his wife committed suicide in 1942 in Brazil, haunted by what was happening in his native Austria and Germany.

(4.5 stars) Stefan Zweig's Post-Office Girl, published posthumously in 1982 in German under the title "Rausch der Verwandlung" and in the New York Review Book Classic series in 2008, is an unfinished novel fragment in two parts that the author worked on in the early nineteen thirties and, apparently, did not return to before his untimely death by suicide in 1942 in Brazil. The first part, taken from Zweig's original material, tells the story, set in 1926, of an Austrian young woman, Christine, who supports herself and her ailing mother with a lowly position in a village post-office. Out of the blue she is invited by her US-based wealthy aunt to spend a holiday in a glamorous hotel in Switzerland. The second part (edited by the German publisher for the 1982 publication) follows Christine's life following this special vacation. While the two sections differ in style and approach considerably, it is not clear how much these differences are reflecting Zweig's own changing position regarding the political environment at the time, or changes as interpreted by his publishers later, using Zweig's various notes.

For me, the two parts don't quite come together as an integrated novel. The first part, easily understood as a Cinderella story, has great depth in terms of character development and in the depiction of the social conditions, the class society and its habits. etc. of the time. Christine is not only described from the outside as the fast-learning poor girl turning socialite in record breaking speed, Zweig gets into her mind and her emotional state during these changes with great sensitivity. He shows a wonderful sense of satire and humour when describing the various characters that surround Christine. The reader will not be surprised when the Cinderella dream comes to an end - how that happens, however, is quite surprising.

The second part returns Christine into a reality to which she can no longer adjust. Zweig's portrayal of Viennese and Austrian small-town society in the inter-war years is harsh as it is realistic. Poverty is ever present and the possibilities to escape from it, or even to move one or two steps up the social ladder are difficult if not impossible to realize. Those further up the social classes have little sympathy for those struggling; the State is an anonymous unsympathetic entity, even for war veterans. For some, like Christine's newfound friend Ferdinand, dramatic desperate actions may be seen as the only the hope left. How will Christine combine her life with any new ambitions? Personally, I found the second part less convincing, the story, especially the concluding section too drawn out. Despite some scepticism, Zweig's novel is an important document for the time period. Unfortunately, in contrast to other NYRB books, there is no introduction to the novel and the context in which it was written. This would have been helpful, not only to readers coming new to Zweig and his work. [Friederike Knabe]

Christine Hoflehner, the postmistress in a small village in Austria, seems an unlikely Cinderella. Coming of age in the crippling poverty prevalent in Austria after the First World War, she is now twenty-six, barely holding out on her meager salary as a state employee, without social life, without future. But then a fairy godmother appears in the form of an aunt who has married well in America, who invites her to stay with them at a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. Once there, she lends her fashionable clothes, buys her expensive accessories, and takes her to a beauty salon to complete the transformation. Drab no longer, Christine is now the belle of the ball, courted by the rich and titled of several nations. It takes a week or more before her personal clock strikes midnight, but when it does and she flees home in shame, she can no longer be content with the humdrum life she had left behind. This becomes the story of a Cinderella after the ball, with no prince to appear with the glass slipper.

The book's German title, added by the publisher, is RAUSCH DER VERWANDLUNG (The Intoxication of Transformation), suggesting the heady change that comes over Christine in her grand hotel, but also implying the disillusionment that must inevitably follow. This is the subject of Zweig's second part, which was left unfinished at his death in 1942. I have to admit that I found the ending unexpectedly abrupt, though I did not feel unsatisfied. It seemed to leave the outcome open, even optimistic, rather than continuing the downward spiral that was probable in real life. After some months of depression, Christine meets a fellow spirit named Ferdinand, a wounded veteran of the War returning from extended captivity as a POW to find a country unwilling to make any use of his talents. Now bitterly aware of the social inequalities that surround them, Christine and Ferdinand conceive a plan to start their lives anew, and it is on this note of muted possibility that the book ends.

It is a weakness, I think, that the two parts of the book have such a very different tone. The opening, aided by a racy translation by Joel Rotenberg making ample use of twenties American slang, reads almost like F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is all action and excitement. Anyone who has ever lived for even a day beyond their means in a luxury resort will feel Christine's enchantment, and anybody who has merely looked in from the sidewalk will know her subsequent pain. In the second part, I think more of Steinbeck. Action is mostly replaced by description, interior monologue, and (once Ferdinand comes on the scene) impassioned speeches about political inequality. This section tells us a great deal about the kind of social conditions that would provide a fertile seedbed for National Socialism only a few years later. But it makes a less exciting story. Perhaps if Zweig had written a third part, he would have answered the heady opening with high-speed adventure of a different kind. But it is difficult to imagine any upbeat ending to the misery of those interwar years, that would drive Zweig into exile, see his books burned, and give birth to another War. This book may be unfinished, but so was history. Even as it is, this is a novel that will first intoxicate you, then open your eyes to reality -- sobering yet undeniably important. Its belated publication is most welcome.

This novel tells the story of Christine Hoflehner, a post office clerk, in a small village outside Vienna some years after World War One. Here Christine exists, sharing a dank attic with her ill mother. The war has stolen her father, her brother and her capacity to laugh. The war may have ended, but poverty has not: `Now it's creeping back out, hollow-eyed, broad-muzzled, hungry and bold, and eating what's left in the gutters of the war.'

Christine is roused from this existence by a telegram from her rich aunt, inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. And here, she discovers life rather than existence. Alas, it cannot last, at least not in this form.

It's the telling of the story, by the impersonal narrator, that caught and then held fast my attention. Whatever other messages the reader takes from this story, it is impossible to ignore the tragedy and loss as a world shudders in response to one war, in a period which we 21st century readers know will soon be followed by another. It's a combination of this knowledge, Mr Zweig's prose, and speculation about his intentions in writing it but not seeking its publication that make this story so moving.

`Someone who's on top of the world isn't much of an observer: happy people are poor psychologists.'

Stefan Zweig wrote this novel in the aftermath of World War One, but it was not published in his lifetime. It was first published in Germany in 1982 and was published in English in 2008. Zweig committed suicide in a pact with his second wife in Brazil in 1942.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This small novel set in Austria after WWI portrays with vivid poignancy the stifling impact of poverty and the bitter alienation engendered by new wealth as the two face each other amidst the ashes of a great empire's destruction. Written with such feeling that it almost resembles a fairy tale but one with out color, constructed all in shadows of gray on gray.

In The Post-Office Girl (New York Review Books Classics) the reader is taken on a journey with Cinderella, albeit one drenched in the reality of Austria sandwiched between the Great War and the Nazi uprisings of the 1930's. Stefan Zweig's twist also gives us a part II. What might happen the night after when things don't go well? Zweig didn't start with "Once upon a time" and he won't end with "they lived happily ever after". Thus an interesting story is born.

Christine is described as young girl but really a woman (28 years), from a prosperous happy family in the pre-War Austro-Hungarian empire who slides into wartime destitution and finally just part of the mass of post war working poor. Suddenly she is touched by great wealth and given a chance to let her beauty and charm flow out and be recognized only to suddenly crash back to reality. Zweig creates a family history around Christine including a rich Aunt back in Europe from America many years after leaving for her own potentially scandalous reasons. Christine's aunt invites her on holiday in Switzerland and her first taste of luxury. Fancy dresses, lofty conversation, new relationships, friendships and potential romance all collide transforming Christine from a tired, plain postal worker into literally the prettiest princess.

In Zweig's tale "midnight" comes when Christine's aunt fears for her own position in society and sends Christine physically and emotionally careening back to her drab, nearly hopeless life. At that point Part II begins. How Christine handles the crushing reality of everyday life having seen how the other half lives was more interesting to me. Perhaps because we all know something of Cinderella the second part of the book lent itself to a more unpredictable and provocative path where Christine is increasingly embittered each time she senses a better life might be lead than her own.

Zweig is said to have written the story in 2 parts and years apart. I think he was less convincing in part I, I found his early portrait of Christine less convincing on how she how transforms into a giddy silly girl drunk on her new place in society. Maybe making her 28 was a too old for me to buy into one so easily changing identity but in the second part I saw a person that could hold and cultivate anger, self absorption and depression. It seemed credible and attention grabbing. The story seemed to speed up. Her new relationships - more accommodations then friendships act to reinforce her own feelings of being cheated and further poisoning her mind.

I found the story ultimately quite satisfying including the sudden ending which did not leave me feeling short changed but rather it felt like an opportunity for readers to reach their own conclusions of which any number of paths may seem inevitable and that's quite a trick.

In the Post Office Girl Stefan Zweig creates a remarkable parable. A young woman working in a village post office and caring for her sickly mother suddenly is invited by an Aunt whom she's never known to join her and her husband in a luxurious Alpine resort. While there she goes through a transformation that is indeed Cinderella like and even assumes her Aunt's surname. Her exuberance and attractiveness is immediately noticed and she is caught up in the life of the upper classes and accepted as one of them until a jealous false friend exposes her secret. Just as suddenly she is rejected and forced overnight to return to her prior life. From there the novel takes a decidedly dark turn.
Zweig was an incredibly gifted writer and the scenes, emotions and thoughts he describes flow so naturally and are so well conceived that the pages of this relatively short novel fly by.

As an examination of the relative impact of poverty or wealth on the choices people are given and as an indictment of pre-war Europe's class structure this is first rate. The people Christine encounters at the resort are incredibly shallow and her rejection by them has a real sting in it for both her and the reader.