Customer Reviews

Three Paths to the Lake (Modern German Voices)

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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.