Three Paths to the Lake (Portico Paperback Series) [Paperback]

Ingeborg Bachmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997 | Series: Portico Paperback Series

"Three Paths to the Lake", Ingeborg Bachmann's second and final collection of short stories, consists of five narratives about the lives and loves of five different women. Socially uprooted and emotionally isolated, each protagonist struggles with possibilities for survival in the 1960s. Bachmann's portraits reflect a compassionate yet unswerving perception of humanity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Prize-winning Austrian-born Bachmann ( Malina ; The Thirtieth Year ) has influenced such writers as Max Frisch, Peter Handke, Christa Wolf and Gunter Grass; she died in 1973. Translated into English from the German for the first time, each of the five stories that make up this complex, finely wrought collection is a portrait of an Austrian woman in the late 1960s. Bachman's women are either fiercely independent, as Nadja, the well-traveled translator in "Word for Word," Elisabeth, the successful photographer in the introspective "Three Paths to the Lake," and Beatrix, the young woman who lives only to sleep and visit the beauty parlor in "Problems Problems"; or they're neurotically tied to their men, as Franziska, who fears her emotionally sadistic husband in "The Barking." Bachmann's central theme is the power of language to transform women's experience in a patriarchal society; the work is not only intellectually charged, but imaginative and evocative as well. Clearly influenced by Robert Musil, this powerful book could well become a classic.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Holmes & Meier Pub (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0841910715
• ISBN-13: 978-0841910713
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,388,618 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad Faith, November 3, 2008

By 

David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Three Paths to the Lake (Portico Paperback Series) (Paperback)

Bachmann is an interesting case for American readers. She has lots of the bohemian qualities we associate with our own idols of the 50s. One thinks, for example, of Sylvia Plath. Bachmann was not a suicide but she died in that trendy, awful way many youthful talents die. In her case, it was from falling asleep with a lit cigarette. She strikes me as a cross between James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, only with brains. This collection of stories is both slight and powerful. They are neat little experiments in language, reminding me somehow of Gertrude Stein. As stories, there is not much that is memorable, but often the experiment is not with the story told so much as the mood of the moment that she is good at catching. The narrator is a feminine voice. What sets her voice apart is its command and control. Her female characters wear the pants, or so it seems; then again I am not certain that the men have anything on. I especially liked her experiment with expressing thoughts as they occur, creating the impression that the thinking of the characters is simultaneous with the reader's attention. She's not a believer, which is refreshing; her sophistication derives from her disappointment, as always, lending her narrator a maturity and sadness that is refreshing. Bachmann is little known in the States, caught up as we are with global modalities and the like. Here is a fine writer, a feminine voice alone in the Beckettian wilderness.