The Vision of Emma Blau [Paperback]

Ursula Hegi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 16, 2001

The Vision of Emma Blau is the luminous epic of a bicultural family filled with passion and aspirations, tragedy and redemption. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Stefan Blau, whom readers will remember from Stones from the River, flees Burgdorf, a small town in Germany, and comes to America in search of the vision he has dreamed of every night. The novel closes nearly a century later with Stefan's granddaughter, Emma, and the legacy of his dream: the Wasserburg, a once-grand apartment house filled with the hidden truths of its inhabitants both past and present. Ursula Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the frailty of language and its transcendence, the love that bonds generations and the cultural wedges that drive them apart.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ursula Hegi's The Vision of Emma Blau is an epic story of German immigrants attempting to assimilate while still preserving traces of home in their language and rituals. In 1894 Stefan Blau leaves Europe for America; he is only 13 years old, but he feels the need for another country so strongly that it wakes him up at night. After narrowly escaping a restaurant fire in New York City, he finds himself in New Hampshire. With money he has saved from waiter jobs and poker winnings, he buys a small hotel, which over time he transforms into a six-story, elaborate apartment house. The Wasserburg (water fortress) is a palace towering over a half-empty lake town, standing out in the landscape the same way Stefan's accent stands out in conversation--exotic, awkward, a hybrid of German and American dreams.

Hegi's writing is lively and graceful, moving across time, space, and generations without faltering or bogging down. While her scope is vast, her great gift is for particulars: Stefan's third wife, Helene, who has a deep-seated aggression in her soul that her mother attributed to her being a "biter" as a child; his daughter, Greta, who lags in school but notices things no one else does--"the reflection of the half moon that swayed on the water like a slab of frost," or the music of her flute--"long notes that sounded like the calls of large birds flying through the night." These moments of poetry open up The Vision of Emma Blau, halting its swirling world with their loveliness.

Hegi is best known for her 1994 novel, Stones from the River, which Oprah chose for her book group, catapulting this somewhat obscure writer onto the bestseller lists. But Hegi was around for a long time before Oprah shined the light on her. She is a born storyteller, a witness to the immigrant experience who is reimagining America's past from the perspective of those who desired that country as a promised land, but who even after 100 years could never quite sleep the sleep of its native sons. --Emily White --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Much as she did in Stones from the River, Hegi creates a social world in microcosm, and, following her characters for almost a century, fashions a saga of hidden loves and destructive obsessions. The fictional German town of Burgdorf, the setting of Stones and Floating in my Mother's Palm, also figures in this novel, the story of a German-American family and their fellow residents in an opulent apartment house set, inappropriately,in a rural community on the shores of New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee. In 1905, Stefan Blau, recently emigrated from Burgdorf, has a vision of a girl dancing in a courtyard (foreshadowing identifies her as his eventual granddaughter, Emma) and resolves to give substance to his dream in a building that he will call the Wasserburg. Stefan's passion for the Wasserburg is also a curse, manifested when both his first wife and his second die in childbirth. Determined not to risk another child, he returns to Burgdorf and marries Helene Montag (sister of Leo, the dwarf Trudi's father in Stones). Helene tricks him and has a child of her own--and survives--but the sibling rivalry among Stefan's offspring, combined with the personality defects they acquire when he reserves all his love for the Wasserburg, will threaten to destroy the family. Hegi uses the story of the Blaus and their tenants and neighbors to examine the social pressures on German-Americans during two world wars, and to contrast the differences in cultural attitudes and behavioral standards. She tends to animate characters in terms of psychological eccentricities (one of Stefan's sons eats compulsively to make up for paternal cruelty; his sister can foresee the future and heal by touching; and the eponymous Emma has the same obsession with the Wasserburg that prevents Stefan from nurturing his family). The eventual deterioration of the Wasserburg symbolizes the family's decay, but the much-signaled curse on the house is finally broken. Hegi's gift for depicting family dynamics and sexual relationships, including the concealed sorrows and tensions that motivate behavior, anchors the narrative, but it is her larger perspective of a family's cultural roots that grants her novel distinction. Agent, Gail Hochman. 6-city author tour. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (January 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684872730
• ISBN-13: 978-0684872735
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,090,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Epic in scope, March 7, 2000

By 

Michael Leonard - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vision of Emma Blau (Hardcover)

A great piece of work. Hegi has done a fine job! I read Stones from the River last year and loved it so it was great to revisit the American side of this family. Although, stylistically "Vision..." is not as sophisticated as "Stones..." it is still astutely observed. AS a new immigrant to the US I identified with Stephan Blau as he forges a life for himself in a new country. The issues raised re: the immigrant experience ar spot on: the language barrier, the feeling of belonging neither here nor there, the problems of assimilation and the cost of retaining one's loyalties to one's homeland are all explored. The characterisations for the most part are good - I loved the stream of consciousness episodes - while the characters' are acting their true hidden motives are being revealed, The Wasserburg contains a wonderfully eclectic cast of individuals spanning all generations and it is perhaps the central character. We are witness to its inevitable decay as Emma is released from her "vision" This novel is a sweeping view of America and shows us how love and tradition can have such a multi-generational impact. Hegi brings a wonderfully luminescent quality to her writing and she maintains a startling capacity for detail. A great work by a great writer and it has made me want to revisit Stones From the Rover all over again!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reviewed by Jana Siciliano for Bookreporter.com, March 22, 2000

By 

"dev_books" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vision of Emma Blau (Hardcover)

Ursula Hegi has always been an insightful, thoughtful,respected author. With THE VISION OF EMMA BLAU, her reputation as oneof the finest contemporary fiction writers is sealed. A German native, her work crosses any possible cultural borders --- every book is a tightly woven exultation of life as experienced by human beings, regardless of sex, creed, or any other distinguishing factor. She is, quite simply, a marvelous storyteller.

THE VISION OF EMMA BLAU is the story of Stefan Blau, a 13-year-old boy who flees his small town in Burgdorf, Germany. He comes to the USA in search of a chronic vision that haunts him --- it is a vision of a small child he hasn't seen before and a place he hasn't ever visited. The book travels from Germany to America and covers nearly 100 years. Emma, his granddaughter, is the girl of his dream; his sprawling apartment house, the place of his dream. Wasserburg, Stefan's estate, falls into a slow fade and parallels the evolution of American society. The book tells the life of the Blau family, but it truly reflects the experiences of all families that have lived and prospered and suffered throughout World War I and World War II.

Immigrant life in America is not a new subject. But somehow the beautiful prose Hegi utilizes brings Stefan's story into full bloom and makes us feel like we are reliving that period of history all over again, through a truly new perspective. I think this is a very difficult feat to pull off --- but the vision itself presents a framework that keeps us on the edge of our seats: When will Stefan's vision become clear? Who is the girl? Where is this place? How does it all tie into the life he creates for himself anew in the New World, then passes onto the generations of German-American descendants that come after him? THE VISION OF EMMA BLAU is a remarkably poignant story, far-reaching in its scope and irrevocably heartbreaking and heart soaring in its portrait of the growing up of America.

I would heartily recommend THE VISION OF EMMA BLAU to anyone who is part of a family, who wonders about how we all affect each other, our country, ourselves, with each of our experiences, as well as how the world around us affects our lives. These are important questions about life as we knew it in the twentieth century and provides plenty of indications as to how these times will affect us in the new millennium. Congratulations to Hegi for another affecting, considerate novel. What could have been a tired retelling of generational love transcends sentimentality to become a rousing, deeply evocative tale through which we can rediscover America.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing after Stones from the River, April 27, 2000

By 

Victoria S "Writer wannabe" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vision of Emma Blau (Hardcover)

The start of this book about Stefan Blau and his wives is very intriguing -- I would have liked the book to be all about them. The characters of his children were boring and his grandchildren even more so. There were just too many characters over such a long period of time that I stopped caring about any of them -- especially the house, which was much too central for my tastes. I was actually rooting for its collapse by the time Emma was around (my least favorite character). The beautiful style of Heigi's prose is about the only thing that kept me going to the end. A big disappointment since "Stones from the River" is one of my all time favorites -- one I recommend to all my friends. I would never recommend this one to any of them. I gave it three stars because it was not terrible, and like stated above, her prose is wonderful to read. I just had really high hopes for it after "Stones" -- compared only to it, this is a 2 or less.