Agnes by Peter Stamm

First published in German in 1998; first published in translation in the UK in 2000; published by Other Press on October 25, 2016

Agnes is narrated by a man whose name we never learn. The narrator is in the Chicago Public Library, researching a book about luxury trains, when he meets Agnes. They begin a daily ritual of hanging out together. Later, over dinner, Agnes starts to share her dislikes (eating) and phobias (death). After they begin sleeping together, Agnes shares some details of her antisocial past.

Agnes wants the narrator to write a story about her so that she’ll know what he thinks of her. The narrator complies, at first chronicling their past, but eventually writing about events that have not yet happened. Agnes dutifully fulfills the role that the book ascribes to her.

Of course, life can’t be scripted, which may be Peter Stamm’s point. Life follows a course we can’t predict and things do not always work out the way we plan. Rewriting a life isn’t as easy as rewriting a story.

Eventually, however, the narrator appears to be writing the life he would prefer rather than the life he’s living. I suppose we all do that, in a way, imaging a life that is different from the one we live, even if we don’t write down our imaginings. But again, writing an imagined life rather than living a real one may not be the best route to happiness.

The bleak ending is telegraphed at the novel’s beginning. Readers looking for a warm and fuzzy reading experience should stay far away from Stamm.

The characters in the last Stamm novel I read (Seven Years) were so self-absorbed that I didn’t enjoy reading about them. This novel (Stamm’s first) is better. The two characters are self-absorbed but the story is told in such an interesting way that my detachment from the characters didn’t bother me. The stark novel is a quick read — the story is deceptively simple — but it should be read slowly and with some care to give the mind time to unpeel its layers.

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A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler

First published in Germany in 2014; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 13, 2016

“Death is the Cold Lady,” says Horned Hannes as Andreas Egger carries him on his back from the goatherd he was tending. Hannes was near death when Egger found him, but on the way to the village, Hannes suddenly separates himself from Egger and begins to run back up the mountain. “Stop, you stupid fool!” Egger calls. “No one has ever outrun death.”

That scene begins A Whole Life. As the title suggests, the novel is the story of Egger’s life. It is not an easy life. Egger encounters death, and nearly meets his own, more than once. He lives on a mountain that is prone to avalanches. He works for a cable car company, risking his life while dangling in the air to keep the cables clean and oiled. In 1942, he goes to war, having been conscripted by the Wehrmacht. In the Caucasus and as a POW, he observes more death. Later his abusive step-father, in a chance encounter after years of separation, reminds him that “Death misses no one.” A funeral procession interrupts when he wants to enjoy a child’s laughter. When he meets a couple who are lost in the mountains, the husband was preparing to “lay down and die.” And so on.

Despite all the imagery of death, Robert Seethaler reminds us that other images can be life-affirming. Andreas doesn’t have a television but two televised events stand out in his memory -- seeing Grace Kelly waving to reporters and watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Some images spark a sense of awe that can never set aside.

Egger’s life is a series of transitions, from job to career, war to peace, husband to widower. A Whole Life is not so much the story of a man who is struggling to find himself as it is the story of a man who stumbles forward, taking what comes his way. It is the story of a solitary life, for as Egger tells a tourist, “Every one of us limps alone.” Where other novels celebrate the importance of love and friendship, A Whole Life celebrates solitude. Joy, for Egger, does not come from social interaction; it comes from being alive.

Perhaps Egger is deluding himself when he extols his pleasure in being left alone. Perhaps Egger saw so much of death that he feared forming attachments with friends and lovers who would inevitably die. Those are questions for each reader to decide. Arguably of greater importance is that Egger lived a simple life, did not succumb to temptation, caused no harm, never had a reason to experience guilt, and felt no regret. Perhaps being able to look at the mystery of life “with a full-throated laugh and utter amazement” is enough to make a life whole. I admire A Whole Life for its refreshing and unexpected perspective.

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The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango

Published in Germany in 2014; published in translation by Atria Books on June 23, 2015

Henry Hayden engages in "sporadic acts of goodness" that he regards "as mere interruptions to human wickedness, and that inescapably lead to punishment." He is driven to destroy the things he loves, but only those things, and not entirely without regret. His complexity is the best thing about The Truth and Other Lies.

For the first quarter of the novel, I wasn't sure what kind of story I was reading. Then, in a pivotal and quite unexpected scene, it became clear why this is billed as a crime novel. The crime initially seems to be one of impulse but also one of mistake -- a crime gone wrong. Later, with about a quarter of the novel remaining, the story's true nature comes into focus. The Truth and Other Lies is less a crime novel and more a slow unveiling of a criminal.

But what kind of criminal is Henry? Known to the world as a bestselling author, Henry has been having a longstanding affair with Betty, his editor. Henry has kept the affair a secret from his wife, Martha, although Betty's pregnancy is making secrecy a problem. Henry has also kept a secret from Betty that is known only to Martha. Henry's trouble's mount as the story progresses but Henry tends to shape his own fate, so it isn't surprising that (as he observes late in the novel) fate is inevitably kind to him.

Henry has a secretive past in which he made an enemy, although Henry is oblivious to the enemy's existence for most of the novel. That character, like others in The Truth and Other Lies, is dangled before the reader in a tantalizing tease, then disappears as the story's focus returns to Henry. Seemingly forgotten characters return at key moments as the plot follows its carefully charted course. The mystery of Henry's past begins to play a critical role about midway through the story.

While The Truth and Other Lies is an engaging crime story, it is also a well-crafted psychological portrait of a self-centered man who suffers from a lack of empathy. Is he a psychopath or merely an opportunist? Does he have no conscience or does he simply lack impulse control? Is he detached from reality? What forces have shaped him? The police detective who hunts Henry wants to learn the truth about him but that, according to Henry, is the detective's fundamental mistake. "There's no truth in me," Henry says. "The truth has been eaten up by the fish, the truth has been burnt up in the furnace, the truth is ashes."

It is just as difficult for the reader to know Henry as it is for the detective. That isn't surprising because Henry has concealed his true self from everyone, just as Sascha Arango hides it from the reader. "We have to love Henry without knowing him" laments one of the women in Henry's life. No reader will love Henry but his complexity makes him a fascinating protagonist.

The story is good, if less interesting than Henry. It generates suspense but this isn't "edge of my seat" reading. Arango's prose is fluid, the ending is clever, and the entire novel is infused with dark wry wit.

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Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker

First published in German in 2007; published in translation by Atria on April 14, 2015

I liked The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, although I had reservations about the novel's late stages. Readers who loved that 2002  novel will probably like Jan-Philipp Sendker's 2007 novel less. While both books explore the intersection of the East and West, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is fundamentally a love story. Whispering Shadows is more a novel of international intrigue, although a love story lurks within its pages. I think Whispering Shadows is a superior novel, but readers looking for another Art of Hearing Heartbeats might be disappointed.

Paul Leibovitz is the son of a Jewish father and a German mother, but only in Asia does he feel at home. The death of his son in Hong Kong turns Paul into a hermit. Three years after that death, Paul, now divorced, has an ambiguous interest in a woman named Christine but he resists the notion of having a girlfriend or, for that matter, a life. He prefers to brood for fear that moving on will cause him to lose his memories of his son.

On a rare trip from his home on Lamma Island to the island of Hong Kong, Paul meets Elizabeth Owen. Paul has little interest in her problems but when she tells him that her adult son has disappeared in China, he agrees to contact a friend named Zhang in the Shenzhen police who might be able to help. Christine, who has a deep distrust of Chinese officials based on a family tragedy, urges Paul not to become involved. The discovery of a violent death in Shenzhen sucks Paul into a quagmire. He doesn't want to get involved, but destiny or karma intercedes when Zhang asks for his help ... or perhaps Paul realizes that the time has come to start making choices.

Eventually the novel shifts to the perspectives of other characters. One is Victor Tang, a Chinese entrepreneur who has benefitted from the intersection of criminality and capitalism. Another is Richard Owen, who objected on grounds of patriotism to his son's plan to close the family's manufacturing plant in Wisconsin in favor of manufacturing in China. The final primary character is Zhang. He is a familiar character in fiction, the honest cop who opposes corruption, although as a Buddhist in China he doesn't fit the "cop novel" stereotype.

All of the characters are realistic, in part because their behavior is often less than ideal. To a degree, they are all selfish and self-absorbed. For good reason, Zhang is fearful to the point of paralysis. Having rejected the childhood lies his country told him about the benefits of shared sacrifice, Tang craves power. Richard is jealous of his son. Christine is controlling while Paul has walled himself off from emotion and human contact. They are all wrestling with their pasts and, in the case of the Chinese characters, with the impact of Mao's China on their pasts. Part of the novel's intrigue comes from wondering whether the characters will overcome those issues.

America's progression from Buy American to Fire Americans, and the notion that the American Dream is now (in altered form) the Chinese Dream, are among the novel's most interesting themes. Another important theme is the inability of people who grow up in a free nation to understand how oppression and the hunger for freedom shapes behavior. Still another is whether truth exists as an objective fact or whether truth is what people with power decide it should be. The cousin of truth is trust. Can we trust those who conceal the truth? Does the answer depend on the reason for hiding the truth? Finally, the novel explores the theme of bravery. Doing the right in the face of risk is an act of bravery, but is it also an act of stupidity if it will destroy your life without preventing evil from being done?

As he did in The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, Jan-Philipp Sendker writes of passion with honesty and intensity, from physical and emotional perspectives. He gives key characters a variety of interesting conflicts. Whispering Shadows fails to generate much suspense and the plot did not grab me on an emotional level, but the interaction of the characters creates dramatic tension. The story moves forward at a comfortable pace and reaches a satisfying conclusion.

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Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner

Published in Germany in 1932; published in translation by Other Press on March 3, 2015

The Blood Brothers are a group of boys (mostly in their teens) living rough and dispensing rough justice in Berlin in the early 1930s. They're all running from something -- from home, from an institution, from the law. They live in fear of apprehension, of being asked for their papers, of spending a night without food or shelter. Like hundreds of other boys in Berlin, they "prefer to starve at liberty to being half-fed in welfare."

Willi Kludas, older than the rest, jumps the wall and escapes an institution after beating one of the staff members. He takes a harrowing trip to Berlin, then scrounges for money so he can pay to sleep in a basement, buy cigarettes, or purchase the affection of a girl. His story is similar to Ludwig's, who is also arrested as a runaway. When Ludwig escapes, he is arrested for a crime he didn't commit. Of course, he runs again at his first opportunity, but not before spending time in various institutions. It is Ludwig who introduces Willi to the rest of the gang.

Willi and Ludwig are the primary characters but other gang members make regular appearances. Fred joins the gang after escaping from the room into which his father has locked him. Walter is frail but is deemed heroic after being shot in a dustup with a rival gang. Heinz can't hold his liquor. Fred cooks up most of the illegal schemes to keep the gang in money. Konrad and Jonny provide the gang's muscle. Ulli leads (more or less) an "affiliated" gang.

The novel's moral focus sharpens when the gang turns to picking pockets and stealing purses for survival. Not all gang members are comfortable with theft. Even the ones who steal tend to be decent young men who did not choose their lives, who commit crimes as a last resort, preferring to work when they can -- although, without papers, their work is limited to shoveling snow and mending shoes. But what can gang members do who disagree with the crimes the gang commits? The Blood Brothers take care of each other with a fierce loyalty that was missing in their own families. Refusing to participate would be an unforgivable measure of disloyalty. Is it worth leaving the gang in order to hold one's moral center, even if that means losing the protection and companionship that are essential to surviving on the street? Are the other means of survival even worse than stealing?

Blood Brothers conveys a strong sense of realism. Ernst Haffner draws a sharp contrast between the Alexanderplatz portrayed in the cinema, a place full of cheap thrills and champagne lounges where "aristocratic gangsters won't do a job except in tops and tails," and the reality of homeless drifters, desperate prostitutes, brutal pimps, brutal police, and the unemployed who depend on casual crime for food. Poverty bedevils youth and the elderly alike.

Blood Brothers doesn't quite achieve the dramatic impact that Haffner must have intended but it does generate sympathy for its unfortunate characters. Except for Willi and Ludwig, there is too little to differentiate the characters from each other. The novel does a better job of depicting the impact of poverty on groups of young men than it does of telling individual stories. The ending is a bit rushed and a tad preachy. The novel is nonetheless an effective condemnation of a system that it more interested in whether people have "papers" than jobs. It's also a testament to the human spirit -- the drive not just to survive but to live free -- and to the bonds of friendship forged by hardship.

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