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tomleetang's review against another edition
3.0
"These two dangers - the danger of merely telling what happened and the danger of a human individual becoming painlessly submerged in poetic sentences - have slowed down my writing, because every sentence I am afraid of losing my balance."
How do the individual and the general meet? How does one tell a specific story but also make it relevant for others?
This precise prose elegy is not just for the author's mother, but for a whole generation of women who found themselves defined by their environment, with very little chance of defining themselves.
How do the individual and the general meet? How does one tell a specific story but also make it relevant for others?
This precise prose elegy is not just for the author's mother, but for a whole generation of women who found themselves defined by their environment, with very little chance of defining themselves.
dukegregory's review against another edition
5.0
Handke's novella-length memoir/biography reads like Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" if "One Art" were about grief and didn't just display the breakdown of form but also the fundamental breakdown of language itself. Handke attempts to write about his mother's death with a brutal sense of distance, and yet, of course, that venture is bound to fail. But what comes of such a goal, alongside Handke's lack of achievement of said goal, is a book about the oppression of women, the inability to form identity without a stronger language on which to fall back, and the fragility of writing as a means of recuperation and memory. It's super metatextual and postmodern, but not in the explosive nature of American writers, like Pynchon or Delillo, but in a rather implosive way that feels distinctly Austrian (or rather anywhere in which German is spoken). It feels as if Handke is pleading with himself to find meaning and truth in his mother's suicide, and what he finds is bleak. His attempt to find truth through narrative is undone at every turn, and yet he fights for it within the text itself. It's apathetic yet deeply emotional, as if you're staring into a constantly reopening wound that will never entirely heal.
itsgs's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide and Death of parent
3point14159's review against another edition
5.0
A writer's account of his mother's suicide -- very depressing, very moving