Customer Reviews

Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria's Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd

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I bought this book last night and could not put it down. what an amazing story! i was laughing and crying at the same time. sam is able to approach the subject of anti-semitism and prejudice with a fresh,surprising approach of wit and humor while not minimalizing the intensity of this topic. the tale, set in Austria, has Sam and the Shepherd as an unlikely team exploring the age old question of prejudice while each of them are searching for their own personal truths. sam's "woody alan" attempt at "travel dating" and the shepherd's unorthodox relationship with his wife & girlfriend are interwoven throughout this story and give this heavy subject a modern edge that keeps the reader wanting more. very informative and poignant yet a fun and easy read.

I started reading this at the bookstore and then decided I had to buy it. The writing is incredibly engaging and smooth, which makes it all the more interesting that it's describing this guy's fraught relationship with the western world's shared past and his own family's history. It's one of the few books, too, featuring a neurotic Jewish protagonist whose tics I actually find believable and whose sometimes self-obsessed meanderings are worth following through every twist and turn (and I am decidedly not neurotic and non-Jewish!). I highly recommend sampling this unique new voice - especially if you have an interest in Europe, family memoir or, strangely enough, genetics.

This is a fascinating and unusual book. It defies definition -- it's a travel journal, character profile and history lesson all rolled into one. It's comedic and sad -- at times intimate, often funny, and always very human. The author manages to examine the political landscape of Austria on a very personal (and sheep filled) level. In spite of its serious subject matter, the book's pace is swift and entertaining -- and the author's wit and chronic neuroses are irresistible! My only wish was that the book would come complete with a cd collection of Hans the wandering shepherd's greatest Yiddish hits.

Regardless, it's unlike anything I've read before, and I would highly recommend it.

This was a Father's day gift selected by a thoughtfull daughter and was devowered by me in a single interlude. Yiddish is a very rich language and contains many words which define subtle differences between closely related conditions. For example Hans is clearly michiggie while, in my opinion, the author is zedreht. Michiggie means a little bit crazy; in contrast zedreht means really screwed up. The book is at times, funny, strange, bizarre, sobering and fascinating. The presentation of Mr. Apples many and not uncommon neurosis, while interesting, is perhaps overdone. The issue of Austrian anti-semitism is well explored and the failure of many older Austrians to come to terms with it does not reflect positively on their society. We should never forget that Hitler was an Austrian and that his exposure to anti-semitism in Vienna played a significant role in his attitude towards the Jews.
Even though the book has a rather weak ending I enjoyed it and recommend it to everyone as a good example of how neurotics can be interesting people and how they can survive in a complex and often hostile environment.

I don't understand how people can fall over themselves to sing praises of Jonathan Safran Foer and his ilk when Sam Apple clearly trumps the ever-living hell out of the supposed new Jewish literary elite. Shelpping Through The Alps draws vivid pictures, raises intense emotions, explores history and modernity, is refreshingly honest and non-pretentious, and best of all, is side-splittingly funny. I generally hate novels, but I couldn't put this one down. It's an inviting read and I invite you to read it and compare to the works of every other Jewish novelist adorning Nextbook, Guilt & Pleasure, et al. Could you honestly say you'd rather see another Everything Is Illuminated than a new book from Sam Apple? I doubt it.

"Schlepping Through the Alps" opens a fascinating window for Americans into the little-discussed world of Austria's internal politics. Unfortunately, the view is clouded by Sam Apple's insistence on foisting descriptions on the reader of his neuroses, his sexual adventures with a "hip" Austrian woman, and the banal details of the protagonist's dysfunctional family. Woody Allen worked comic wonders with the neurotic secular Jewish character, but that persona lost its freshness nearly 30 years ago. If a reader may offer advice to Mr. Apple for his next book, it would be to share more of the results of his impressive interviewing and observation skills, and to keep his private life private.

Sam Apple, a young, Jewish writer from Houston, decided to spend several weeks with Hans Breuer, a Yiddish-folksong-singing, Austrian, wandering shepherd. This books tells of his visit. We learn about Hans's personal history, and how he came to his most unusual occupation. We also learn quite a bit about anti-Semitism in Austria, both historical and present-day. Both of these are fascinating topics. Whether you enjoy this book will depend on whether you also find interesting its third topic, which is Apple's own rather extensive neuroses.

This book has at least two major strengths. First, the topic itself is certainly fresh. I, for one, have never before read a book about anti-Semitism and modern shepherding. And second, it is very funny. Apple has a number of amusing adventures, and he never hesitates to use self-deprecating humor.

I enjoyed this book very much. I felt its focus was a bit too varied--I had a hard time shifting from discussions of Nazi atrocities to descriptions of Apple's sex life. Also, I finished the book without truly feeling that I understand Hans Breuer very well. Nevertheless, I do recommend it, both for its entertainment value and for its educational value.

There are two stories here. Which one dominates your reading will depend in part on your tendency to optimism or pessimism at the moment that you read. The grim story that hangs over everything is the fate of the Jews in Austria. There were a quarter million Jews and people of Jewish parentage in Austria in the 1930's. After the Austrians decided to kill or expel their Jewish neighbors, there were almost none. Today, the Jews of Austria number about 10,000-most of them in Vienna.
The comedy is the story of Hans Breuer, a folk-singing grand-child of the radical sixties. In the middle of the world's most developed economy, he makes a living as a shepherd: a Jewish shepherd.Sam Apple, the author of this book, plays with the nature of the shepherd's life, the mercurial personality of Hans Breuer and the odd business of being Jewish in a country where killing Jews was a bit of a national sport.
Having spent a great deal of time in Vienna, I can tell you that Apple gets a great deal of this right. He certainly gets all of it funny, or at least wry. He concentrates on lingering old-fashioned anti-semetism and ignores both the small philo-semetic counter-trend and the more genteel neo-jew-hating of the left.
Apple spends a great deal of his time talking about himself and so the book is also partly a memoir. The self that he reveals is game for the adventure of being a shepard for a while, but also comically neurotic and thereby a bit unattractive.
On one of my last trips to Austria, I went to a Hans Breuer recital. It was at a bar in the countryside. Half the audience was out from Vienna, the other half local people having dinner. Breuer seemed to think he was in a concert hall and between songs went back in the kitchen to silence the cooks. It was an awkward moment, but one that seemed to fit.

Lynn Hoffman, Author of The New Short Course in Wine

A chochem is, in Yiddish, a wise person. Sam Apple, the writer, is a lot wiser than Sam Apple, the character he creates, a woody allen-ish hypochondriac awkwardly trying to write a book about a wandering Jewish Austrian shepherd. Apple also scores a literary triumph in his portrait of the one-of-a-kind Hans Breuer, the shepherd.

Post-modern in its best sense, the book makes wonderful and surprising connections between the search for justice and reconciliation in post-war Austria, the history of domesticated animals, Yiddish song, sexuality and the fine points of herding 675 sheep through mountains, forests and small towns.

I sat down to read for a few minutes and stayed in the chair for most of the day, following the hapless Sam as he tries to live the life of an alpine shepherd with Hans, Hans' estranged wife and devoted girlfriend, his sons and various eccentric friends like Austria's giant champion scythe-wielding grass-cutter. More is revealed when Sam spends time in Vienna meeting politicians, survivors of the Shoah and anti-racist activists, including the beguiling Irene, a welcome romantic interest whose fling with Sam forms a revealing counterpoint to Hans' tangled love life.

Through these varied landscapes, Apple's voice is funny, knowing and refreshingly humble. He gracefully mixes and blends the
Jewish, picaresque, storytelling tradition of Sholem Aleichem and S.Y. Agnon with the irreverence of Phillip Roth and the eye for quirky detail of Bruce Chatwin He's a young writer whose first book jump starts what I imagine will be a surprising and exciting career.

I read this enchanting book when it first came out and could not put it down. Reading it for the second time, I can't help but wonder, "why isn't this a movie?" This rare, heartwarming story told with such humor and wit could easily translate into another media form. It's definitely time to replace "The Sound of Music" with a new travel guide through the Alps. After all, a shepherd, a nice Jewish boy, and a beautiful girl could make the hills come alive again. Hollywood, where are you?