Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sensitively Valuable Elegy, January 20, 2003
This review is from: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
With thanks to the New York Review Books, Peter Handke's A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS is once again available. This slim but pungent volume opens with an elegant introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides ( author of 'Middlesex' and 'The Virgin Suicides' ) and few writers could better place this memoir of Handke's response to his mother's suicide in 1971 in a more meaningful perspective. Handke writes about his mother in a way that creates a story rather than a history of a life. There is so much understantding of how the world changed from Pre-WW II through the post war emptiness of a desecrated Europe and its accompanying slow move toward healing that plagues burned countries after victories or defeats signalling the end of wars. Handke's mother remains nameless which serves to make her a more universal figure than just another individual. And using the word 'individual' is actually in contrast to the major problem of this tragic women's life. Always a women of poverty, suffering the cruelties that that station in life suggests (a fatherless child, a marriage of convenience that results in a life with an alcoholic husban, self induced abortions, begging for food, the lack of simple luxuries like Christmas gifts, etc) his mother was not a woman who considered herself an individual: she was a daughter of a postwar poverty and gloom, aligning herself with Socialism which further negated her worth as a unique person. Her gradual withdrawal in yet another group (those with 'nervous breakdowns') overtured her ultimate complete withdrawal from the world as she finds taking her own life the final solution to her grief. Handke reserves his own response to the loss of his mother until the end of this memoir - a section of memories, flashbacks, regrets and tears that force him to place his final godbyes in the form of the written word. The writing is powerful in its simplicity, unfettered by false emotions, straight forward in forcing both the author and the reader into confronting the tragedy of suicide. Perhaps many readers will use this short tome to find healing of like experiences: others will read this book simply because it is a beautifully constructed story of the life on an Everyman/woman. Highly Recommended.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The finest auto/biographical work I know, January 2, 2003
This review is from: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)
At once stark and lyrical, Handke's A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS is one of the finest memoirs I've read, and, without a doubt, the strongest portrait I know of a mother by her son--a portrait made strong, in part, by Handke's ability to see and analyze his mother's life within the context of the limited choices available to her, and by his ability to see the ways in which her life is molded by the "genre" of a life comparable to a woman of his mother's class and station. It is, too, at once loving and mercilessly painful. I'm not a great fan of Handke's--the intensity of his self-consciousness, or the cool ironic stances of his early work--but this brief book is an exception. Read it & you will be reading it again throughout your life.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a postmodern biography with depth, bite, and poignance, April 6, 2000
A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS details the struggles of Austrian author Peter Handke to tell the story of his mother's life and of his relationship to her. Vigorously resisting cliched description, Handke's portrait of Maria Handke is a non-drama of post war suffering, poverty, and the vain attempt to achieve middle-class happiness. But the novella also provides a moving testament of the author's often unwilling love and admiration for his mother, and his solidarity with her decision to take her own life. A must read for anyone interested in mother-son relationships, autobiography, German lit, postmodernism, and gender. It's unique and unforgettable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
