Marlen HaushoferReseñas

A woman finds herself stranded alone in a remote forest house when a mysterious wall suddenly appears seemingly killing everyone and everything beyond it. She must learn to survive possibly as the only remaining human. Fascinating portrayal of the simultaneously terrifying and freeing nature of being alone and having all preconceived notions of society and human separation from nature being summarily lost

Written by a German author about 40 years ago, The Wall describes a very unique apocalyptic world in which only one woman survives. Haushofer's insights on what it is to be a woman in any type of world are as true now as they were in the 60s, maybe even moreso. I was especially moved by the narrator's relationships with the various animals who enter (and leave) her life. Highly recommended for serious readers who aren't afraid of disturbing subjects.

I'm out of step here. Nea​rly all ​reviews, and certainly the ​reviews of ​reade​rs whose views I ​respect have been unreservedly glowing. So I approached this book with a high degree of positivity. And then - I had real difficulty making myself finish it. I found the characters dismal and unsympathetic, and the whole thing downright depressing. Obviously I'm missing something important. I just don't know what,

truly stunning story about nature, identity, survival, solitude/isolation...i'm left with so much to think about and mixed feelings of grief and hopefulness and catharsis. certified banger½

eigenartig, sehr klare Sprache, durch Zeitsprünge manchmal etwas schwer einzuordnen, macht nachdenklich,
Was ist wichtig? Was ist das Leben?
Was will die Autorin sagen?

Geschreven in 1963, in een periode waar de muur en de kerndreiging reëel waren. Het hoofdpersonage moet zien te overleven in een solitair bestaan, de wereld achter de 'wand' is dood. Zij kan overleven dankzij haar dieren (een koe, hond, poes) en de vruchten en planten die ze vindt, soms schiet ze een zwak dier (dat toch zou sterven) om wat vlees te hebben voor haar en haar dieren. De natuur en zij leven in harmonie, ze hebben elkaar nodig en helpen elkaar.
Van bij de aanvang is er een dreiging in het boek, je weet dat de hond zal sterven maar pas helemaal op het einde krijg je de (beetje anti-) climax over wat en hoe het gebeurd is.
De beschrijving van de natuur en vooral haar relatie met de dieren in prachtig beschreven. Van het mmoiste dat ik gelezen heb!

[3.25 stars] Fans of dystopian fiction who expect a heart-pounding adventure will likely be disappointed by Haushofer’s work. First published in the early 1960s and reissued decades later, “The Wall” unfolds at a maddeningly slow pace to explore themes such as isolation, disenchantment and the concept of time. One summary aptly describes the plot as “largely uneventful.” Indeed, about 90 percent of the book involves the protagonist foraging for food and performing routine tasks for a menagerie that includes cats, dogs and cows. But the author embraces the sluggish pace with purpose. The narrator realizes that in slowing down her pace, she has truly connected with the forest. It’s an important message to those who live frenzied lives and fail to observe and appreciate their surroundings in the rush-rush of life.

In "The Wall" the narrator is visiting her cousin and her cousin's husband in their hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps. She was left alone one night while the others went into the nearby town and awakened to find that the area she is in is surrounded by an invisible wall (unroofed). In the distance she can see some people frozen in their tracks. She sees no creature living outside of the wall (not even insects). Her only companions are a dog, a cow, and a cat. She is like Robinson Crusoe - no phone, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury. She's as primitive as can be.

The actual story takes place 2 1/2 years later, and she is using the last pieces of paper she has to write her "report", as she terms it. She writes how she has learned to survive. She chops wood for heat and cooking. Using some old potatoes and beans she found she grows more of them. She finds wild nettles that she eats for greens. The area she is in is large enough that many deer are living inside the wall. Luckily, she knows how to hunt and dress the deer for meat (though she does not like to do so). She grows grass for hay for the cow and knows how to milk and care for it, and even helps the cow (who was pregnant) give birth. There are a few different lodges inside the wall (many miles apart), and she spends most of her time in two of them at different times of the year. She has, at the time of her writing, pretty much used up the remainder of the food that had been left in the buildings (she long ago used up the flour and has no bread). I certainly could not have done what she does. I don't hunt nor know how to dress a deer, take care of cattle, know what greens one can eat, etc. Nor survive without coffee!

The story of how she survives is very engrossing, as are her thoughts on being left so alone. You learn about her life prior to being trapped within the wall, her family (she had two grown daughters), and other relationships. Perhaps the wall is symbolic of her prior life, she was behind a wall before this, just not a physical one. And how and why is the wall there? What has happened to the rest of the world? Why is she alive?

The book was written in 1968 by German author Marlen Haushofer and has just been reissued this year. It does not seem dated, and is most certainly a book to read. The book is part science-fiction, part feminist, part survivalist, and all thought provoking. I wish more of her books were available in English, I would absolutely read them.

"It’s a strange feeling, writing for mice."

The Wall is the best-known work by the Austrian writer, Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970). The plot is simple, a woman vacationing in an Alpine hunting lodge finds herself alone when her housemates do not return from a party across the valley. When she walks out to find them, she finds herself confined to the valley by an invisible wall. The only person she can see on the other side of the wall is dead. There is no radio reception. Birds are killed when they fly into the wall. Her diary recounts her life alone with only a bloodhound, a cat, and a cow. She learns to be independent and at peace in nature. The novel is a sphynx-like symbol that lets critics do what they will with it. The London Review of books treats it as a survival tale. The LA Times describes it as a reverie. The New Yorker says it is a commentary on utopian and dystopian themes. The Atlantic proclaims it as a “feminist vision of escape” and the Chicago Review of Books finds in it a paradigm of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “container novel,” a form that avoids the violence of a traditional plot. Who am I to chime in? 4 stars.

A woman staying in a hunting lodge at the foot of an Austrian mountain wakes up to find that an invisible wall has gone up around her mountain and that every living creature on the other side of the wall is dead. Although this may sound like the beginning of a science fiction work, the wall is only a literary device to allow the author to put her heroine in an existential situation of total solitude. The book follows here for 2+ years as she adapts to her situation with her only company being a dog, a cat and a cow.

The book is about so many things: nature, solitude, womanhood, the relationships between animals and mankind, and so much more. The descriptions of nature are wonderful while the story unfolds at a slow pace. The story stayed with me long after I finished reading and I found it all unsettling.

easily one of the best movies i've watched in the past year...
the plot revolves around an impenetrable barrier surrounding an austrian hunting lodge, but once you get past this, the story becomes more a study on how to survive, relationships, all done with just spare narration...
honestly, it's a difficult movie to talk about, but i found it truly enjoyable. the cinematography was stunning as well...

Beautifully written. Not much happens in this book but the themes, nuance and perceptiveness of the character and the writing touched me deeply.½

A meditation on loneliness and what it takes to make one feel happy and satisfied. Surprisingly very little.

I don’t know why, but it seems I am drawn to books about singular women that have a heightened contact with nature. I’ve just read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip, about a female wizard that grew up in isolation, surrounded by fantastic beasts. I also have fond memories of Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by the Polish Olga Tokarczuk – who won the 2018 Nobel Prize. And don’t get me started on The Door by the Hungarian Magda Szabó: while my review of that 1987 book was just short, it is one of my favorite reads ever – if you haven’t read it, I urge you to give it a try.

25 years older than The Door and 46 years younger than Drive Your Plow…, The Wall also has a central European origin: Austria. Marlen Haushofer wrote it in German, and Die Wand was translated in English in 1990 by Shaun Whiteside.

The story has a clear speculative premise: the female protagonist gets trapped in the Austrian mountains, as a suddenly appearing giant transparent wall closes her in, encircling the hunting lodge and the surrounding landscape – mountains, woods, an alm, a valley. It seems all animal life outside the wall is dead, and the woman is left to her own devices to survive – together with a cow, a dog, and a cat.

(...)

In a way, it is a miracle Haushofer managed to write an utterly compelling novel, rather than a drab, boring tale about someone planting potatoes again and again. The Wall sucked me in after 30 pages, and if I could, I would have finished it in one sitting.

Two factors contribute to that. The fact that the main character writes only for herself makes for an honest voice, resulting in someone interesting, devoid of moral conventions, a woman that isn’t shy to admit she has grown disinterested in her two children.

Haushofer herself led something of a double life, living partly in small town Steyr, where she was the quiet wife of a dentist and nobody knew she was a writer, and partly in Vienna, where “she moved in fashionable literary circles, discussed books and ideas, had affairs”. The Wall‘s protagonist easily convinces as a real character, not some naive concoction, and it seems to me this is the result of Haushofer being in touch with the full spectrum of human existence – and not some idealized moral version of it.

The second factor is that Haushofer – with very few narrative tricks – manages to convey a constant feeling of dread to the reader. Because of the specific nature of these tricks, it is best to limit your exposure to spoilers.

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It½

This book is awesome.
Everything about it is awesome.

I recommend it to everyone.

A woman visits an alpine hunting lodge with two relatives for a weekend getaway. She stays behind when her cousin accompanies her husband to the nearby village to buy supplies. The next morning the two still have not returned. The woman decides to walk to the village with her cousin's dog. She loses sight of the dog but when she finds him again, the dog is acting confused and will not start walking again. The woman knows the dog will follow so she continues....only to walk into an impenetrable barrier. It's like a glass box has come down over the area surrounding the hunting lodge. She can see through the barrier to the world outside, but there is no way through the wall. She sees no birds, small animals or even live insects on the other side. The people she can see are inanimate like they are sleeping or died where they stood. She knows in an instant that everyone she knew is dead. Everything on the other side of the barrier is dead. Soon she has gathered up the dog, a cat, and a cow. She spends years caring for the animals, learning to grow food and care for herself, and writing a diary about her experiences.

This is a psychological and thoughtful story, rather than a tale with a recognizable plot or even a real ending. But given the situation the woman must endure, the sharing of everyday thoughts, concerns and horrors is perfect. She has no other people for company, only her animals. It has a profound effect on her to the extent that she is never given a name. Why do you need a name if you are the only person left? She comes to see her animals as her family and does her best to survive. The ending is abrupt with no real resolution, but realistically the resolution will come when the woman dies and there is nobody left at all.

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel. Narrated by Kathe Mazur, the audio is just over 9 hours long. I'm glad I chose the audio version of this book. The story moves slowly (which is appropriate given the subject of a woman being totally alone for years with just animals for companions). I don't think I would have finished the print version....her daily diary and inner monologue about her animals, growing food, etc would have bored me quickly if I was reading it for myself. The audio brought the woman's situation to life.....it was like hearing her thoughts, so I was more interested in the story despite its tendency to plod along without any real developments.

I think it is a distinct possibility that Stephen King got the basic idea for his Under the Dome story from this book. He just added more people, a real plot and some horror -- he "Kinged'' it up and made it his own. The Wall is a totally different sort of story. It shows what happens to a person's mind when they are utterly cut off from all human contact and how it comes down to a person's will to survive. I'm glad that the main character found animals she could befriend and love, otherwise I think she would have weakened and died, or might have killed herself.

Interesting and very thought provoking book. I'm glad I listened to it. I really want to re-read King's Under the Dome now!

“hier, een kort verhaaltje over katten”, dat was de laconieke mededeling waarmee de Oostenrijkse schrijfster Marlen Haushofer (1920-1970) in 1962 het manuscript van deze roman naar haar uitgever stuurde. Het typeert haar droge, niet-sentimentele maar toch precieuze benadering van haar eigen werk en van het leven in het algemeen. Haushofer is één van die onderschatte/miskende auteurs die om de paar decennia herontdekt worden door een select groepje lezers en er – onterecht – toch maar niet in slaagt een plaats te verwerven in het verheven literaire pantheon. Wellicht lag dat aan haar eigen, bewust gekozen onzichtbaarheid, maar ook aan haar niet-spectaculaire stijl.
Dit boekje bijvoorbeeld verhaalt de overleving van een bijna 50-jarige vrouw in een Oostenrijks aandoend berggebied nadat ze om mysterieuze redenen van de buitenwereld is afgesloten door een reusachtige glazen wand, de rest van de wereld lijkt uitgestorven. De vrouw (we zullen nooit haar naam te horen krijgen) schrijft neer hoe ze na haar aanvankelijke verbouwereerdheid alles in het werk stelt om binnen haar afgeschermde domein in leven te blijven. Met doorzetting, vernuft en hard labeur slaagt ze daar ook in. Dit lijkt dus een variante op het Robinson Crusoë-verhaal, en dat is het zeker. Maar het is ook heel anders.
Slechts mondjesmaat leren we wat meer over de voorgeschiedenis van de vrouw en haar kijk op het leven. Blijkt dat ze in het stadium was dat ze zich geen illusies meer maakte over het leven, wellicht in een depressie was beland; ze schrijft bijvoorbeeld erg denigrerend over haar volwassen dochters en haar voorbije leven. En eigenlijk is ze blij dat ze niet meer met mensen in aanraking komt. In die zin is de wand dus ook wel gewenst, een zegen. Ook het gender-aspect komt regelmatig aan bod: ze mijmert af en toe over haar voorbije leven met haar man, haar ondergeschikte, zorgende rol in het gezin, en de angst dat er in haar isolatie toch weer een man zou opdagen die haar weer zou knechten.
In de plaats ontwikkelt ze een innige band met de enkele dieren die haar toevallig omringen: vooral de hond Luchs, de kat die enkele jongen krijgt, en de koe Bella met haar stierenkalf. Dit boek is een prachtig staaltje van een nu – in 2020 – heel modieus onderwerp: de verkenning van de verhouding tussen mens en dier, binnen het posthumanistische kader waarin we mogelijk aan het geraken zijn: “Die Schranken zwischen Tier und Mensch fallen sehr leicht“, schrijft ze. Dat maakt het actueel karakter van dit 60 jaar oude boek ook zo pregnant.
Een groot deel van de tekst gaat naar de precieuze beschrijving van de activiteiten van onze ongenaamde protagoniste, het gras maaien voor hooi, een aardappelveld planten, bessen plukken, urenlang in de zon of in het bos zitten…. De stijl is sober en vooral kroniek-achtig, helemaal niet sentimenteel, integendeel, eerder afgemeten en ontnuchterend, wat heel goed bij de gemoedsgesteldheid van de vrouw past. Maar dat maakt de lectuur soms wel redelijk taai (misschien ook omdat ik dit in het origineel Duits las).
Toch blijft het boek je in de ban houden. Want er zijn geregeld aandoenlijke passages over de omgang met haar dieren, de beschrijvingen van het geweldige bergachtige uitzicht, en heel af en toe een mijmering over haar bijzondere situatie. Het buiten-de-tijd staan, het overbodige van opsmuk nu er geen andere mensen zijn om haar aan te kijken, en het eeuwige zelfgesprek dat elke mens met zichzelf voert, het zijn maar enkele – korte – filosofische mijmeringen die dit verhaal kruiden. “Im Grunde sind diese Gedanken ganz ohne Bedeutung. Die Dinge geschehen eben, und ich suche, wie Millionen Menschen vor mir, in ihnen einen Sinn, weil meine Eitelkeit nicht gestatten will, zuzugeben, daß der ganze Sinn eines Geschehnisses in ihm selbst liegt.”
En dan dat slot, plots en fel, dat greep me wel aan. Het zette het schrijnende van de situatie van de vrouw – en bij uitbreiding de mens in het algemeen – nog eens dik in de verf. Wat overblijft is het zelfgesprek, de dialoog aangaan met jezelf, om niet gek te worden. Curieus genoeg start deze roman juist met die redenering: “ich habe diese Aufgabe auf mich genommen, weil sie mich davor bewahren soll, in die Dämmerung zu starren und mich zu fürchten. Denn ich fürchte mich. Von allen Seiten kriecht die Angst auf mich zu, und ich will nicht warten, bis sie mich erreicht und überwältigt. Ich werde schreiben, bis es dunkel wird, und diese neue, ungewohnte Arbeit soll meinen Kopf müde machen, leer und schläfrig. Den Morgen fürchte ich nicht, nur die langen, dämmrigen Nachmittage".
Dit raakt wel een gevoelige snaar: zijn we niet allemaal bang voor de lange schemerige namiddag? Dit boek is soms een taaie brok, maar het is wel een prachtig en pregnant, modern aandoend verhaal.½

Eine Frau will mit ihrer Kusine und deren Mann ein paar Tage in einem Jagdhaus in den Bergen verbringen. Nach der Ankunft unternimmt das Paar noch einen Gang ins nächste Dorf und kehrt nicht mehr zurück. Am nächsten Morgen stößt die Frau auf eine unüberwindbare Wand, hinter der Totenstarre herrscht. Abgeschlossen von der übrigen Welt, richtet sie sich inmittten ihres engumgrenzten Stücks Natur und umgeben von einigen zugelaufenen Tieren aufs Überleben ein.

A dystopic "Walden," narrated by the last woman alive and starring a cat, a dog, a cow, and some other animals. I keep thinking about this book & I don't know why it's not taught in schools; it's so elegant & precise. It ends so swiftly. It's so well-written it should be required reading. There isn't an excess word in this book & I loved it, I hope all my friends read it.

Una donna, una Robinson Crusoe dei nostri giorni, durante una gita in montagna rimane separata dal resto del mondo da una parete sorta misteriosamente e deve organizzarsi per sopravvivere, maturando un nuovo rapporto con la natura, gli animali, se stessa e il proprio passato. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1963, La parete si è imposto negli ultimi decenni come libro-culto tra i lettori di tutto il mondo, parallelamente alla crescita di una nuova coscienza ambientalista e femminile.

Nel 2012 da questo romanzo è stato tratto un film, vincitore di molti premi, tra i quali il premio della giuria ecumenica al Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Berlino.

«Che bella storia, per una metafora su quella solitudine ormai divenuta un fenomeno sociale (...), una metafora alta che non ottunde la suspense romanzesca; lo stile è affascinante».
(Lietta Tornabuoni - Tuttolibri/La Stampa)

Read the book. Watch the movie. Both are really great.

The diary of an ordinary middle-aged woman who appears to be the last person alive on earth. She learns to survive and love the animals around her. Very enjoyable read, considering that really nothing happens and there is no explanation about the event that disposed of the rest of humanity.

What would you do if you found yourself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall, where everyone outside of it is dead and you're alive? How would you survive? For the unnamed narrator in Haushofer's The Wall, you take things one day at a time and learn how to survive the best you can with what you have be it one calf that you raise for milk, kittens that find their way to the house and then leave, or the dried beans in the pantry that you'll need to find a way to grow so you can have something to eat. Oh, and your dog.