Big Bad Wool

 

Big Bad Wool / Leonie Swann
trans. from the German by Amy Bojang
New York : Soho Crime, 2025, c2009.
370 p.

Part Two in the series by Leonie Swann about a flock of sheep that solves mysteries! This one is a little more philosophical than the first, Three Bags Full. The sheep from the first story are now wintering in France with their new shepherd, Rebecca. They are uncertain about what is going to happen to them after this pause, and try to chat up the goats in the next pasture to find out a little more about the strange location that Rebecca has found for them. But goats, well, they are a bit insular and a bit nuts at the same time -- it's hard to get a straight answer out of any of them. 

But there has been trouble in the past; there are rumours of a loup-garou who may have returned to the scene of his crimes. A dead deer has been found in the woods, killed in the same manner as the victims from years before. 

The story moves a little oddly here; it feels a bit surreal -- of course, we are looking at it from the point of view of sheep, so obviously it's a bit fantastical. But this feels a bit hard to piece together from impressions by different members of the flock, sometimes at least. There is a kind of metaphysical mystery going on alongside the real killings, the ones that everyone is afraid will escalate. At times you aren't sure if the characters interacting with the sheep are real, imaginary, or ghosts. And the human characters are a bit indecipherable from the sheep's eye view, too. 

I liked this novel, and thought that some of the characterizations and the writing were enjoyable. Not sure I really understood or bought the mystery plot here though. It felt a little darker and a little more metaphysical than the first novel, which was straightforward in plot in comparison. Still the idea is great, and the sheep telling the story is what makes this series special. I did like it; hopefully there will be another in this series translated soon! 

Gilgi

 

Gilgi / Irmgard Keun
trans. from the German by Geoff Wilkes
NY: Melville House, 2013, c1931.
240 p.

Imagine my delight when I saw this lovely Neversink edition of Gilgi at a secondhand bookstore recently. I've been looking for more Keun, after reading her Artificial Silk Girl quite a few years ago. I was pleased to now be able to read her first novel. 

I found this story full of hectic energy and a strong female voice, like her other novels. This story is a little scattered, perhaps because it's her first, but it is still snappy and fresh and full of sharp social commentary. Gilgi knows what she wants, she has her eye on a business career, teaching herself typing and languages and dressing the part of an efficient secretary. She's young, energetic and ambitious. 

But, like many other young women, she gets completely sidetracked when she meets a man. He's a friend of her friend and somehow she becomes infatuated so thoroughly that she puts aside her timetable and ambition to focus on him. She leaves her parents' house to move in with him, after they've told her she's adopted - even her quest to discover her birth mother feels anticlimatic after she switches her energy to focus on her new man. 

But even within this absorbing relationship, there are prickles from the outside that disturb her. She comes across an old acquaintance who is selling vacuums door to door; she visits his wife, another old friend, only to discover they are nearly destitute, with 3 children and another on the way, and about to be evicted. She rushes around for a lengthy part of the second half of the book, trying to find some money for them; it's a nightmarish, frantic scene. And then she finds that she is also facing a momentous decision -- and makes what I felt was the right one, striking out on her own once more. 

This story is powerful and feels so contemporary. Gilgi is living in Germany post WWI, and rising fascism is all around her, for those who cared to look. She faces misogyny when she goes to see a doctor, and there is a great speech she gives about the right of a woman to make her own decisions. She flits around nightclubs, around offices, around town, and gives a vision of class and privilege that can differ wildly within very close quarters. As always, Keun doesn't pull any punches in her realism, and the result is a wonderful, illuminating read. 

Marlen Haushofer's The Wall

 

The Wall / Marlen Haushofer
translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside; read by Kathe Mazur
Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audio, 2013, c1963.

Another dystopia with a final woman left in the world, but I listened to this one rather than read it. I thought that worked quite well for this story -- the narrator was calming to listen to, which suited much of the story. 

The book opens when an ordinary middle-aged woman wakes up to find herself alone, the only person left in the world. She's up at a country chalet, her hosts had gone into town the night before. She walks down to see what's up and hits a wall, a literal, though invisible, wall. On the other side are people frozen into place, but fully dead. She assumes it has been a military experiment gone wrong, and tries to plan her survival.

She has a dog, a cow and a cat. She has a chalet with supplies for a weekend's trip. She has tools, arable land, and time -- lots and lots of time. Much of the book is a quiet, methodical description of her planting and gathering and animal husbandry and thinking. She edges toward introspection but doesn't spend a lot of time on existential questions, she's too busy with physical survival. 

It's a really interesting setup, melding the absolute silence of the natural world with one person trying to survive within it, with all of her memories of her life before, as a social being. It's a quiet read, elegaic, thoughtful, with a few moments of higher drama, particularly near the end. When I started the book I felt it was becoming repetitive, and I didn't know where it was going, but once I got into the rhythm of it, I found it almost hypnotic. Fascinating concept and an unusual way to examine a woman's place in the world. 

What You Can See From Here

What You Can See From Here / Mariana Leky
trans. from the German by Tess Lewis
London: Picador, 2022, c2017.
336 p.

I really enjoyed this read that I came across by chance in my library's collections. it's a German book, set in a small village in Western Germany, near a large forest. 

10 year old Luise lives with her parents, and her grandmother Selma, who she is very close to. As the story begins, there is drama: Selma has dreamt of an okapi, a sign of forthcoming death. The villlagers take this omen seriously, but when a death comes, it is not one any of them expected. 

The opening section of the book finishes with this stark conclusion to Luise's childhood, and the next part begins when she's older. The village is still the same; all the oddballs and local residents behave in much the same ways. Selma's friend The Optician still visits and is still silently in love with her -- Luise's parents are still barely holding their marriage together what with her father travelling the world and rarely home -- Sad Marlies is still a grumpy recluse -- but Luise comes across three Buddhist monks in the woods while looking for her dog, and that changes her life once again. 

Another ten years go by, and then Luise's life alters again when Selma dies. This shakes up the community, moving people into new configurations. Luise now works at a bookshop in a neighbouring town, her mother has left her father, and her Buddhist monk returns to their village from his monastery in Japan. There's change in the air. 

The delight of this book is in the style, a relaxed storytelling pace with rich characters, quirky moments, but also some serious events as well. It's an easy read, which flows, and the humour and heart really kept me engaged. I found that the way this book dealt with love and loss, with familial ties and expectations, and the need to find your own place in the world, was eminently readable. I was touched by it, and also delighted with its quirky charm. It was a great find, not too esoteric or experimental, but just a good read. 

Collision

Collision / Merle Kroger 
trans. from the German by Rachel Hildebrandt & Alexandra Roesch
Los Angeles: Unnamed Press, 2017, c2015.
240 p.

The Spirit of Europe, a huge cruise ship, is in the Mediterranean when they are stopped by a raft of Algerian refugees in the water. The cruise ship must cut the engines and wait for a Spanish sea rescue boat to arrive...but a storm is coming. 

This setup is made much more suspenseful by the way it is told. It moves between many of the characters' POV -- from the staff and guests on the cruise ship to the Spanish sea rescue team, to the refugees in their raft and other people in the refugees' lives.

There are characters from all over the world: a cruise ship is a perfect microcosm of a larger world of privilege, and it is juxtaposed with the dangerous, rickety raft that is overcrowded with refugees and is adrift. There are levels of privilege and experience among all the characters, and they interact in different ways with various other characters. A musician on the ship has a relationship with another staff member, but has a very different kind of relationship with the rich ladies on the cruise, for example. It's really interesting how the characters are revealed by the way they respond and react to the crisis situation they find themselves in, but also by the way they speak to and react physically to, other characters. 

The staff are all from different countries and have their own secret concerns. There is also a freighter involved in this situation, with a mix of Russian and Ukrainian crew, and even the politics there are drawn out - I found this so interesting. 

And of course the heart of the story is the plight of the refugees. Their longing for freedom is so strong they are risking their lives for it, but they are still all individuals with their own plans and goals.  

Each of these individual stories affect the other in some way. There is trauma, grief, loss, but also hope and connection. 

I found this an absorbing,  well crafted story and appreciated the structure as well as the content. I found the cover unappealing but the book is well worth picking up. 

Visitation

Visitation / Jenny Erpenbeck
trans. from German by Susan Bernofsky
NY: New Directions, 2010.
151 p.

I really like Jenny Erpenbeck; I've read two of her novels over the last year or two. I found this one in my library's online collection so jumped on it, even though I'm trying to focus on some of my own books this year! I couldn't resist this. 

It's a brief book, and quite poetic in its structure and repetition of phrases. However, the content can be quite hard-hitting. The story is focused on one house over a century of German history -- and we know that German history has had some very dark moments over the last century. 

Erpenbeck examines 12 interlocking individuals whose connections are via this house. She describes the house from its creation to its destruction; the architect who builds in in the late 19th C. to the couple who tears it down after Reunification. The family stories and individual histories cross and blend and end, both near the house and in a wider Germany. 

I feel that there needs to be a warning that there is a scene of sexual violence that is very disturbing. I'm not sure quite why it was there, but I found it really upsetting. 

The other elements are more expected -- lots of WWII and East Germany trauma, and the effects of fascism and communism. This doesn't diminish the horror of some chapters; Erpenbeck doesn't hold back from being brutally factual. 

Despite how dark this is, it's an interesting approach to a century's worth of history. The house is the pivot, but everything else spins out around it. Her writing style is also dreamy somehow, with a brief break between harder to read sections focusing on the gardener for the estate and the way that what he does never really changes over the years; it's a sense of continuity. 

I found this a powerful read, but her later novels are stronger, in my opinion. I still prefer End of Days and Go Went Gone to this one for their stories. But I'll never say no to an Erpenbeck read! 

Erpenbeck's End of Days

End of Days / Jenny Erpenbeck; translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.
New York: New Directions, c2014.
239 p.

After reading Erpenbeck's newest book, Go Went Gone, earlier this year, I checked my local library on the off-chance that there might be another of her works available. We had a copy of The End of Days so I picked it up and started reading.

It was wonderful. It's a sort of literary theme-with-variations, told in five movements connected by an intermezzo, each one ending with the main character's death, then the next section beginning as if that death had been avoided and her life carried on. The "what ifs" and alternate futures are so interesting; I love this kind of book.

But this book is more than an individual life: the imagined lives of the baby girl who dies in the first chapter cover the tumultuous 20th century, in places that are never peaceful. The characters move across countries, away from war and persecution; they struggle to find connection even within their own families; they reflect the larger political and social turmoil of Germany and middle Europe in general. The book is full of traumatic events (not even counting the main character's multiple deaths) but the power of humanity, and our perseverance in the face of trouble, shines out above the details as well. 

The writing is powerful, masterful: each section has its own tone but each is equally absorbing. Erpenbeck's compassion for the mass of humanity illuminates this story, which goes beyond a gimmick to create a richly imagined possible life for our baby girl, one in which each potential branching seems plausible and emotionally wrenching even though by its very structure it also points out the fictionality of it all. 

I was dazzled by and immersed in this book the entire time I was reading. Clever, emotionally resonant, creatively intricate, and with a storyline that I just had to keep following to the bitter end, this was a read I won't soon forget. Highly recommended. 



Further Reading:

Penelope Lively's Making It Up, an imagining of what a character's life could have been if certain turning points had gone another way. Short stories inspired by incidents in the author's life

Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, in which Ursula is born and dies and is reborn, over and over, getting a new try at life each time around

Baba Dunja's Last Love

Baba Dunja's Last Love / Alina Bronsky; translated from the German by Tim Mohr.
New York: Europa Editions, c2016.
192 p.

I loved this book! I loved the physicality of it -- the size, the cover, even the font. And I really enjoyed the story.

Baba Dunja is a babushka who was displaced from her original village by the Chernobyl disaster. But she, and a few other aged residents, have decided that living in city apartments is for the birds, and have returned to their homes in Tchernowo. 

Alongside Baba Dunja, there's her neighbour Marja, a former beauty; Petrow, generally ill and obsessed with finding any reading material possible; Lenotschka who spends most of her time quietly knitting; the nearly 100 yr old Sidorow who proposes to Baba Dunja and then to Marja; the Gavrilow couple who keep to themselves; and we can't forget the ghosts who keep Baba Dunja company, who include her ex-husband. 

But into the remote and isolated stasis that they've managed to achieve in their restored community comes a stranger -- a middle aged man and a little girl. When Baba Dunja investigates, thinking that it's a terrible thing to bring a child to this radioactive town, things go badly wrong. Everyone in the village is implicated in the following events, and as Baba Dunja once again takes leadership, she becomes an international cause. 

The book is light, charming despite its serious underpinnings, and really engages with the idea of home. Baba Dunja has family in Germany - her daughter and granddaughter are there, and she revels in their letters. But she wants to stay home in Tchernowo until the end. I felt that the concept of this book was heavily influenced by the real life "Babushkas of Chernobyl", a group of Ukrainian women who returned to their ancestral homes after the disaster, unable to thrive away from the land.

But in the blurb for the book, it says that Tchernowo is a Ukrainian village - from some clues in the text I think it's more likely that it is on the Belarussian side of things. Just a minor quibble in a really enjoyable read however. I'm going to be reading more of Alina Bronsky in future. 

This House is Mine

This House Is Mine / Dorte Hansen; translated from the German by Anne-Marie Stokes
New York :, St. Martin's Press,, 2016
325 p.

Hildegard von Kamcke arrives at the Altland house of Ida Eckhoff alongside her 5 year old daughter Vera, displaced from East Prussia in 1945. They are taken in, begrudgingly, and given a small room and sparse food in return for work on the farm.

Ida's coldness doesn't drive Hildegard away; rather as she adjusts, she becomes more and more attached to this house. After Ida's son Karl returns from WWII a broken man, Hildegard ends up marrying him, and the house indeed then becomes her own.  

The book follows Hildegard and Vera as they make a home in this setting; but only Vera sticks. Hildegard finds a better offer from a rich man with a villa, and leaves with him - but without Vera, who is then cared for by her stepfather Karl. Vera's never fully accepted by the neighbourhood, always with a taint of 'outsider' despite her commitment to this place, despite the fact that she grew up there. She's too different, too independent. 

But when Karl, old and ill with PTSD, needs her, Vera cares for him in the old rambling house that is falling down around them. But into the picture comes her niece Anne and her son Leo, looking for refuge when Anne's relationship fails. They move to the country because of course rural life is purer and more healing, and develop a new relationship with the cold and emotionally distant Vera. Family heals all wounds! No, seriously, while it does sound a bit like a Hallmark movie, there is more darkness and toughness in this one. Hansen notes, "Vera Eckhoff didn’t know much about her niece, but she knew a refugee when she saw one."

I actually enjoyed the sense of hope and healing that Hansen allowed to arise in the relationship between these two women. While I can be a cynical reader at times, I appreciated that this book was not fully despairing despite its beginnings in war, suicide, trauma, and family dissolution. The power of place and belonging comes through here; while families can break apart, they can also reform themselves into something new. And the very specific place of the house was a powerful central theme, and vital to the creation of belonging. The house had a motto carved on its front: 

“This hoose is mine ain and yet no mine ain, he that follows will caw it his.”

The only constant is change, and this book illuminates that perfectly. The theme of refugees and identities in Germany right now is pretty topical, and Hansen explores the long history of such movement within Germany to give another perspective on alienation and belonging. This was a bestseller in Germany, and its readability, strong story, and additional wry humour might explain why. Recommended. 

Go, Went, Gone

Go, Went, Gone / Jenny Erpenbeck; translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
New York: New Directions Books, 2017.
286 p.

After finishing a string of novels that all seemed concerned in some way or another about women and procreation and all that comes of that, it was refreshing to read this current novel by Jenny Erpenbeck.

Not only does it not focus on procreation, it mostly looks at men and migration.

This story takes on the plight of refugees and migrants in Germany, centred in the experiences of Richard, a recently retired Professor of Classics. He is very privileged indeed, at the top of the heap - an educated white man in his own country with lots to live on and a sense of a solid life with pretty small first world problems to concern himself with. 

But then he comes across a demonstration on Alexanderplatz - African migrants staging a hunger strike, trying to bring attention to their hopeless situation. 

As Richard gets drawn in to the lives of this set of refugees once he volunteers to teach German at a temporary residence, he learns more and more about the impossible situation they are in. Bureaucracy means that they can't work in Germany without having papers, but not being able to work means they can't get papers. Various things like that reappear again and again - if they've landed in Italy they have to claim residence there, but can't unless other conditions are met which can't be met. It's painful to read the frustration and the stalled hopes of these refugees & migrants (almost entirely men in this book). Their back histories are slowly revealed as they trust Richard more and his desire to help expands. And not all interactions he has are glowing with joy; Erpenbeck is no Pollyanna. While some of Richard's friends think he is ridiculous, others start to understand more about what is happening, thanks to his newly awakened awareness. 

This book takes on very timely themes of migration, our sense of identity, belonging, and entitlement, and the responsibility of us all to recognize our common humanity. Erpenbeck writes with intensity and with moral complexity; while it's a timely topic with political currency, this story is a story, not a screed. It's not a political pamphlet at all, rather, a deep and compassionate exploration of people and relationships, and the human connection we owe to one another. It was a thought-provoking and important read.