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Simple Stories
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Better Together
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Ingo Schulze made his American debut in 1998 with 33 Moments of Happiness, in which he unearthed some memorable squalor, violence, frustration, and (yes) happiness amid the rubble of post-perestroika St. Petersburg. Now the author returns to his own stomping ground with Simple Stories, which takes place in an East German Podunk called Altenburg. At first this novel's 29 chapters appear to be a sequence of unconnected small-town vignettes. But gradually these narratives converge, producing a comical and cross-pollinated group portrait that's anything but simple.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Altenburg, in the former East Germany, Schulze's (33 Moments of Happiness) rich and demanding novel comprises a series of seemingly banal but interlocked stories concerning a group of Altenburg B?rger, giving the reader an Ossi worm's-eye panorama of the years since the fall of the Wall. The book begins with school principal and loyal Communist "Red" Meurer's trip to Italy in 1990, where he has a chance encounter with a teacher he fired in 1978, accusing him of fostering unpopular politics in his classroom. Witnessing the emotional destruction of the teacher, who was "rehabilitated" in a coal mine, precipitates Meurer's psychological decline. In the meantime, Meurer's stepson, Martin, an art history student, is struggling to make it in the new capitalist order as a salesman. Then Martin's wife, Andrea, forced to learn to ride a bicycle after Martin has a run of bad luck, is found one day by the side of the road with her neck broken, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run driver. That same day, Dr. Barbara Holitzschek, the wife of an up-and-coming local politician, arrives at a meeting in a tremulous state because she has hit a "badger" with her car. Gradually pieces fall together: the "badger" might have been Andrea, and the Holitzscheks are probably being blackmailed. Andrea's death is merely one thread in Schultz's intricate tapestry; he weaves in many more stories, from the points of view of multiple, interconnected narrators. Patrick, a photographer, gets lost looking for a party; Raffael, who runs a taxi business, has problems at work; Marianne Schubert, a secretary, witnesses a strange scene at her office. Schulze demands that the reader make many presumptuous leaps in connecting the tales, but the complex spirit of contemporary German history lives in his ambitious network of microcosmic intrigues. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
Ingo Schulze made his American debut in 1998 with 33 Moments of Happiness, in which he unearthed some memorable squalor, violence, frustration, and (yes) happiness amid the rubble of post-perestroika St. Petersburg. Now the author returns to his own stomping ground with Simple Stories, which takes place in an East German Podunk called Altenburg. At first this novel's 29 chapters appear to be a sequence of unconnected small-town vignettes. But gradually these narratives converge, producing a comical and cross-pollinated group portrait that's anything but simple.
What is simple, or at least simplified, is Schulze's style. The prose he unleashed in his first book was witty, ornate, and occasionally brutal--call it very dirty realism. This time he's produced a more deadpan work, whose whittled-down, first-person sentences are more akin to Raymond Carver than, say, Günter Grass:
It's Tuesday, April 7. Tom is celebrating his thirty-fifth birthday. Two years ago he inherited some money, and soon afterward Billi, his wife, inherited even more. They're living near Leisnig now, in an old farmstead built around a courtyard. Billi takes care of the twins and the garden and gives flute lessons. Tom is still turning out wooden sculptures--gigantic heads with gigantic noses--that he doesn't have to sell anymore.And so it goes. The very flat, very American tone, which has been adeptly translated by John E. Woods, may be a deliberate mirror of Altenburg's watered-down and Westernized culture. It is in any case an effective vehicle for Schulze's tale, in which great and (mostly) small tragedies seem like aftershocks of Germany's own historical earthquake of the early 1990s. Revolution, the author seems to be saying, is all very well for its cosmopolitan fomenters--but will it play in the sticks? Simple Stories provides at least a partial and hardly pessimistic answer. --Ingrid Broun --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Altenburg, in the former East Germany, Schulze's (33 Moments of Happiness) rich and demanding novel comprises a series of seemingly banal but interlocked stories concerning a group of Altenburg B?rger, giving the reader an Ossi worm's-eye panorama of the years since the fall of the Wall. The book begins with school principal and loyal Communist "Red" Meurer's trip to Italy in 1990, where he has a chance encounter with a teacher he fired in 1978, accusing him of fostering unpopular politics in his classroom. Witnessing the emotional destruction of the teacher, who was "rehabilitated" in a coal mine, precipitates Meurer's psychological decline. In the meantime, Meurer's stepson, Martin, an art history student, is struggling to make it in the new capitalist order as a salesman. Then Martin's wife, Andrea, forced to learn to ride a bicycle after Martin has a run of bad luck, is found one day by the side of the road with her neck broken, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run driver. That same day, Dr. Barbara Holitzschek, the wife of an up-and-coming local politician, arrives at a meeting in a tremulous state because she has hit a "badger" with her car. Gradually pieces fall together: the "badger" might have been Andrea, and the Holitzscheks are probably being blackmailed. Andrea's death is merely one thread in Schultz's intricate tapestry; he weaves in many more stories, from the points of view of multiple, interconnected narrators. Patrick, a photographer, gets lost looking for a party; Raffael, who runs a taxi business, has problems at work; Marianne Schubert, a secretary, witnesses a strange scene at her office. Schulze demands that the reader make many presumptuous leaps in connecting the tales, but the complex spirit of contemporary German history lives in his ambitious network of microcosmic intrigues. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews
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