2.2

A strange novel that faded from my memory within a few days of reading it. My third short novel in a row and, like the others, it runs out of pages before it really gets anywhere.

In this case though, that’s probably for the best.

A woman living with her son in a cardboard cut out of a town welcomes her husband back from a business trip. They decide to go out for dinner and while their eating decide to end their marriage.

None of this seems in any way suprising. She raises her son for a bit while a visiting publisher tries to start a relationship with her but gets no further than the doorstep.

It’s a page-turner primarily because you just want to turn pages to make it stop. What the hell it’s got to do with being left-handed is beyond me.

It felt like a stop-motion animation film of playmobile figures. That’s the best way to describe it, and as for what it’s about, well I guess it’s about being German. ( )

Peter Handke an Austrian by birth won the 2019 Nobel prize for literature. It was a controversial choice because of the Authors pro-Serbian attitudes particularly his support for Slobodan Milošević. Die linkshädige Frau (The Left Handed Woman) was published in 1977. It is a novella with a style very much it's own, perhaps this is because it started out life as a movie script for a film Handke directed in 1978 and he adapted the script for his book.

It has a flat style of storytelling with the author keeping his characters at arms length. They say things and they do things and it is left to the reader to fill in the the thoughts of the inner person. The themes of the book are isolation and loneliness which Handke emphasises by his descriptions of the environment in which they live. The central character is Marianne whom the author refers to throughout as "the woman" who has a small son Stephan referred to as "the child". She is married to Bruno who spends some time away from home travelling because of his work. He returns from a longish trip to say that he will not be travelling much more for his job and suggests they go out to celebrate in a restaurant. They eat and drink and decide to spend the night in a hotel, they return home the next day and "the woman" tells Bruno that she wants him to leave. She is aware of a relationship with a female friend of theirs and he moves in with this other woman (Franziska) Marianne settles down to life on her own with her son, she takes up her old career as a translator a job that allows her to work from home. She has visits from the editor of the publishing house who always brings a bottle of champagne, but she does not enter into any sort of relationship with him.

Marianne's life settles into a new pattern of working or not working, talking to her son and watching the world go by from her picture window at the front of the house. She lives on a housing estate where many of the houses look alike, it is winter and often there are flakes of snow falling from the cold air. She occasionally sees Bruno and Franziska in the commercial centre of the town, but apart from Franziska suggesting she joins a local women's group for support, their conversations are perfunctory. Marian's thoughts and moods are more in tune with the winter landscape; the forest that almost intrudes into her back garden. She takes Stephan for a walk in the snow up onto a forested hill behind their house, they are alone, they collect some kindling and make a fire, then return to the house. However much a person wishes to be alone it is not always possible, there must be some human contact and Marianne cannot avoid all of the life that passes around her and her son.

The omnipresent author tells his story of the small group of people living their lives almost in isolation. The landscape, the housing estate seems to put a distance between them that is captured well by Handke. The book is all about an atmosphere, a cold way of living, almost alien in its coldness. It is a short book that strikes me as a commentary on life in the new towns that were a feature in Europe after the second world war. It does all it needs to do in it's short length. It was originally published in German and I read a French translation. In my opinion its worth a look if you are in the right mood and so 3.5 stars. ( )

I liked this book very much.
It's strange, from the beginning when a woman decides to leave her husband seemingly without any reason.
From there on we read what happens next to Marianne and Stefan.

It was very strange, alienating, to read about 'the woman', 'the child' instead of reading the story by using their given names, while the other characters in the book are mentioned by their names. ( )

Korte novelle: een vrouw breekt plots met haar man, hoewel alles goed lijkt te gaan; ze vervalt in eenzaamheid (ondanks de aanwezigheid van een kind). Handke beschrijft dit zeer afstandelijk, alsof alle personages wezenloze robotten zijn. Dit geeft een heel vervreemdend en vreemd effect, zowel in de leeservaring van de lezer, als in de beschreven existentiële ervaring van de personages. Het toneelmatige van de novelle (misschien heel logisch bij een toneelauteur) komt heel geforceerd over. Niet zo geslaagd dus. ( )