The Silent Woman: A Novel [Hardcover]

Susan Dodd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2001

In the summer of 1914, one month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the celebrated young painter Oskar Kokoschka was in the throes of a passionate love affair with Alma Mahler, the beautiful and seductive widow of the great composer. Now, four short years later, he has become a casualty of the Great War. Unlike many of his compatriots, Oskar has survived both a bayonet wound and mustard gas, yet he cannot seem to recover from his inconstant mistress's ruinous betrayal.With the world around him as crippled as his own body and spirit, the dispossessed refugee arrives in Dresden, where he has secured a teaching position. The director of the city's art museum, Hans Posse, a lonely widower, opens his home to Oskar, offering him a sanctuary in which he can begin to heal and eventually paint again, fulfilling the promise of greatness begun in his youth.For Oskar, however, the war continues to rage without and within, There is simply no life without his beloved Almi, his tormentor and muse, now another's wife. Determined to have her -- somehow -- the grieving artist turns to his host's servant, the shy, reserved Hulda. Shrouded in sadness, the tender young woman reawakens in Oskar desire -- and the passion of creation. But their secret liaison is fueled by Oskar's preoccupation with his lost love, a dangerous obsession that could carry him -- and the innocent Hulda -- beyond hope to a place of no return.A luminous novel of hallucinatory prose set in a time of uncertainty and unimaginable loss, The Silent Womanpulls into focus a world of color, shadow, and heartbreak. Vividly bringing to life the ever-changing nature of desire, the constancy of love, and the illusiveness of memory, it is a sublime work by a uniquely gifted author that celebrates the power of beauty, passion, and hope to hurt and to heal.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dresden in 1918 is far from the rural settings of Dodd's Mamaw and The Mourners' Bench, and the prose style of her seventh work of fiction is a departure, too. Instead of American vernacular, she writes in the sophisticated flourishes of Dresden's intellectual community; instead of being poetically compressed, her language swirls with sensual impressions and erotic emotion. The eponymous Silent Woman is a lifesize doll replicating Alma Mahler Gropius, made for an obsessed Oskar Kokoschka, her spurned lover. Already in debilitated physical condition due to WWI battle wounds and shell shock, Kokoschka is also close to emotional collapse. Although he's been hired as a teacher at the Dresden academy and provided with room and board by the generous director of the art museum, he's unable to paint, sleep or eat. Hulda, the lonely young housekeeper, falls in love with the tortured artist and attempts to succor him. Coming ever closer to dementia, Kokoschka renames her Reserl, takes her to his bed and teaches her to be a lady's maid to his inanimate companion, never seeing her as a woman, only as another instrument to manipulate in his desire for Alma. Hulda suffers his demands in the same silence as the doll, praying, meanwhile, that he will acknowledge her as a person. Dodd's writing has always been graceful, but here she reveals a brilliant visual imagination, expressed in intensely vivid descriptive passages that reflect the personality of an artist striving to express his creativity. But Kokoschka's feverish thoughts and erratic behavior keep the narrative at an overwrought pitch, and his unremitting misery, anguish and despair verge on hysteria. As a portrait of an artist consumed by passion, the novel has authority, but it can be a wearying experience to read. Agent, Esther Newberg.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this work of historical fiction, Dodd (Mamaw) writes about Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. In 1918, right after World War I, Oskar finds himself in Dresden. He has taken refuge in the home of Dr. Posse, a museum director. Shell-shocked and injured from the war, Oskar is also reeling from the loss of the love of his life, Alma Mahler. He is planning to teach art at the local art academy and is also attempting to get his life back in order. Taking care of both Oskar and Dr. Posse is young Hulda, a maidservant who has also lost her first love, Emil, to the violence of war. Hulda becomes enamored of the tormented Oskar as she attempts to nurse him back to health. This fictional snapshot of Kokoschka's life after the war is very loosely based on fact and is an attempt to show how passion, madness, and genius affect an artist, his work, and those around him. The plot is nonlinear and swings between past and present, with letters from the artist to other lovers interspersed in the narrative. Given this uneven flow and characters that aren't fully developed, this is not an easy read. The novel may appeal to fans of literary fiction and art history. Recommended for large literary collections only. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (October 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688170005
• ISBN-13: 978-0688170004
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,856,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Try, But..., June 3, 2007

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This review is from: The Silent Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a novelization of a very brief moment in the life of the artist Oskar Kokoschka. Recovering from serious wounds received during WW1, his intense love affair with Alma, (the wife of the iconic composer/conductor Gustav Mahler) ended by her, Kokoschka goes to stay with Herr Posse, a museum director friend in Dresden.In Dresden Posse has helped his friend find a position as an art professor.

Oskar is not only physically but emotionally scarred both by the War and Alma who is now married to another. In a gallery he sees an exhibit of life-like dolls. Obsessed with the very difficult Alma, he hires the artist to provide him with a replica of his beloved. In a series of letters to the doll maker he describs in minute detail how the doll should look and what she must wear. Oskar eagerly avaits the arrival of his 'beloved'. He prepares clothes, jewelery, bed linen which will befit the august Alma stand-in. And he engages the painfully shy young maid in Herr Posse's household to participate in his 'secret' by preparing her to serve his beloved, even going so far as to train her in the French parlance of a lady's maid.

The book revolves around the day to day events (or rather non-events) in the Posse household waiting for the arrival of the doll. Most of the novel is told from the perspective of the maid who secretly loves Oskar. But to him she is nothing but a necessary tool in the service of his Alma obsession. Although the author is successful in conveying the dreamlike state of Oskar and the maid, in the end the novel fails, becoming dreadfully dull in it's endless recitation of the meals the maid cooks, the market's she visits and the dreary madness of Oskar's obsessed mind.

The 'object' of Oskar's obsession doesn't arrive until nearly the end of the novel, but the book has sunk well before then.

Personally I would have preferred to learn more about Kokoschka's life rather than dwell on the doll and the maid. This book is only of interest to those who already have an intimate knowledge of the music and art of turn of the century Austria and German.