The bestselling voice of Europe's fastest-growing, fastest-living city: the new Berlin. 'The little jewellery box also held the red coral bracelet from Nikolai Sergeyevich. Its six hundred and seventy-five little coral beads were strung onto a silken thread, and they glowed as red as rage. My great-grandmother put the hairbrush down in her lap. She closed her eyes for a long time. Then she opened her eyes again, took the red coral bracelet from the little box and fastened it around her left wrist. Her skin was very white. That evening, for the first time in three years, she shared a meal with my great-grandfather.' Coral bracelets 'as red as rage' from Russian lovers; a sad old woman who nonetheless 'sometimes sang and winked with her left eye and laughed till the tears came'; country houses 'away from Berlin, linden trees out front, chestnuts in the back, sky above': 'The Summer House, Later' is an elegant, measured, reflective collection of stories which captures beautifully the promise of bright colours lying just out of reach of our grey daily routines. Set in and around Europe's fastest-growing, fastest-living city, these stories take as their starting point the monotony of modern urban life -- the endless antennas and chimneys, the pigeons in the gutters -- and looks beyond them to 'the narrow strip of sky over the rooftops'. The literary sensation of the year in her native Germany, Judith Hermann is a wonderfully talented young writer whose ability to find drama and beauty in the smallest, most trivial moments makes 'The Summer House, Later' a very special debut indeed.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
'A daringly lyrical collection.' Oprah Magazine 'An elegant and perceptive reading on the emptiness that fills our lives. Its author is a master storyteller.' Independent 'A collection of striking distinction and poise. Some of the stories touch on brilliance. She can rival the best contemporary exponents of short fiction. Exceptional.' Sunday Business Post 'Tales of impressive quality and formidable originality.' Sunday Times '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 Summer House, Later has an irresistible power! No word is too much and none out of place.' Neue Zurcher Zeitung 'The fragility of life's decisions are relayed without sentimentality, yet with a quiet melancholy. An exceptional debut.' Die Zeit 'The Summer House, Later has created a big impression with its clipped prose and gentle wisdom.' Guardian 'Judith Hermann's prose has conviction and is utterly of its time!' Focus 'Melancholy, muted, sometimes dramatic, but always pointed, precise and without pathos! The drama of Judith Hermann's stories comes from what is unsaid, from a tension between artful staging and that which really happens, but is only glimpsed.' Tagesspiegel
About the Author
Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. She has published two collections of short stories.
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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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