Customer Reviews

The Silent Woman: A Novel

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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.