'This book is about the moment before happiness' Marcel Reich-Ranicki At long last, there is a very stimulating, stylish, entertaining new generation of German authors just emerging who are keen to tell good stories and have very good stories to tell, stories that will travel, stories that are not about the war, stories that are not paralysed by introspection. And the hottest young star of them all is Judith Hermann. Her debut, The Summerhouse, Later, has been the literary sensation of the year in Germany; so far it has sold over 200,000 copies. Hermann herself is an enigmatic, charismatic, sad-eyed creature whose languid manner and idiosyncratic remarks have only contributed to her aura. She's quite something -- dare I say the German Zadie Smith? And her book is principally set in what must be the most exciting city in Europe right now -- Berlin; and it's about an entirely new, young breed of German, possessed of a kind of attitude that that country has never seen before. This is the first time in ten years that Flamingo has cared this much about anything in German. The book itself is sly, measured, chic, moving and reflective -- imagine a Geman version of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (of which we've now sold over 40,000 copies in B-format).
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
'Cool told without sentimentality, drawing power from the precision of the language and from a laconic style that narrates but refuses to explain a world of contingent events and casual relationships where happiness is experienced as memory or aspiration but never as present reality.' Peter Graves, TLS 'The fragility of life's decisions are relayed without sentimentality, with dispassion, yet with a quiet melancholy. An exceptional debut that gives rise to great hope.' Die Zeit
About the Author
judith hermann is 30. This is her first book. She lives in Berlin. Her German reviews were amazing: 'Hermann's prose has conviction and is utterly of its time' Peter Henning, Focus 'Her characters reside in a place beyond time. As if out of nowhere, they suddenly appear; stay for a few days or a week and then disappear: some without trace, others leaving behind the shadow of pain. As one character says, "I come and stay, and then move on. How else should it be?'" The book has an irresistible power No word is too much and none out of place.' Neue Z?rcher Zeitung
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Blasé in Berlin,
By
This review is from: Summer House Later (Paperback)
This collection of nine short stories by Judith Hermann is worth reading. In every story when a character does not know what to do/say he/she will invariably light a cigarette. There is much drinking, drug taking, and a little sex, all starkly described. At no point does anyone seem to enjoy themselves.My favorite story from the collection is "Hunter Tompson Music" which is set in New York rather than Berlin. Hunter, an elderly man, lives in a seedy residential hotel. His greatest pleasure is listening to his classical music collection. When a young woman knocks on his door and introduces herself he is impressed that she can identify the music playing as Bach. This brief interaction is more human contact then Hunter is used to and when a dinner date is made there is a certain suspense to learn the outcome of an event that is sure to be traumatic. "Hunter remembers that he hasn't eaten out for years, that he doesn't know any good restaurants, that he can't tell her anything about the city, that he knows nothing at all." In the event the dinner does not take place and the attempt to establish a human relationship has ambiguous results. What I particularly like about this story is the sense of pathos Hermann invokes for Hunter. It is this same lack of pathos, which I dislike about most of the other stories in the book. The characters seem to be too underdeveloped to be either likable or dislikable in much of the book. This might be due, in part, to the translation. Though it is not fair to be too critical of translators, whose task is nearly impossible, this translation leaves the English reader wondering exactly how the book could have been so well-received in German.
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