Book review

A reputation can last a long time if you do little to disturb it.

The cover of Judith Hermann's third book, "Alice," features a quotation from a review I wrote about her first, "The Summerhouse, Later," in 2001. It describes Hermann as "a master storyteller."

But to call Hermann a master storyteller 10 years ago - after just one work - was a slight exaggeration. There was and still is something inherent in Hermann's style - its brevity and simplicity - that can have an incredible impact on the reader. At times, she can turn emotion into narrative that drives a story lacking in action. Still, real mastery, if at all, comes with time.

Hermann has produced just three books in a decade - two of which are rather slender. It's not all about quantity. But Hermann has hardly developed since "The Summerhouse, Later." "Alice" is not the work of a master and its brand of brevity lacks the depth and psychological insight, which its theme, death, demands.

"Alice" is a collection of episodes in the life of the protagonist, Alice, who, in these pages, loses five men. Five men, who at various stages in Alice's life have meant something to her - they are a former lover, older friends, a current lover, and a gay uncle.

Low definition

Alice is a scarcely defined Berliner, who is possibly in her late thirties. There is no detail about her social background, her job, her daily routines, or much of her history - other than that which we discover through her relationships with the men who die.

At the start, she is called to a small town called Zweibrücken, where her former lover Misha is in the final stages of cancer. Alice has never met Misha's wife, Maja, or their child, but she is there anyway. We just don't know why or what for.

Next, Alice travels with friends, including one who is known only as The Romanian, to visit Conrad and his wife at Lake Garda. Conrad, a father figure, dies unexpectedly and a sense of numbness creeps into the book.

The one key to these deaths is that of Alice's uncle Malte.

Alice hadn't known Malte. Malte would have been her uncle if he hadn't committed suicide on a day in March - almost 40 years ago. Alice was born in April, one month later. […] You are the light in our darkness, Alice's grandmother, Malte's mother, had written […]. Alice shook her head, clicked her tongue. To be the light in someone's darkness.

Disconnected symbolism

The five stories - each named after the men who die - Misha, Conrad, Richard, Malte and Raymond - are recorded, rather than described - in Hermann's characteristic style. She chops sentences, omits verbs, and creates a narrative list of events and - all too often superficial - observations.

It was once the language of Berlin's educated, apparently cultured, post-Berlin Wall scene. It is used here to evoke a sense of clarity where there is only confusion. When people die, Hermann says, everything changes. You stop knowing yourself and all you have are the facts before your eyes. Sticking to the facts could be a tool to protect against the pain.

But Hermann's characters are utterly disconnected from life and death. It leaves this book equally disconnected from any emotional depth or power. It fails to move the reader.

Later they went to the cinema. Which film? Forgotten. A different memory. It occurred to Alice that she apparently couldn't choose the memories; they came of their own accord: the memory of the garden, Raymond in the aviator jacket - soundless and yet part of it all. Alice had worn the jacket occasionally. Looks too good, or something. She pulled up the zipper, put the jacket into the box for the Red Cross.

"Alice" is littered with symbolism - it's expected of a book about death, and a character mysteriously preoccupied by death. Much is made of the seasons, the hot and the cold, familiar towns, alien places, insects, strange dreams, and most of all water - a river, a pond and lakes. There are also carefully planted details, forgotten until they reappear later - such as a card left on the windscreen of Alice's car, asking her to get in touch should she ever want to sell it. But they are like sleepers who never awake.

… she remembered what Conrad had said about the lake […]. He had said, the lake was always ice cold […] But you'll go into the water in spite of that. And you won't regret it. You'll never regret it. What did he mean by that? And what did it mean for everything else?

Alice doesn't know what it means, and it seems her author, Judith Hermann, doesn't know either. Her attachment to symbolism distracts more than it supports the narrative.

The deaths themselves are connected only through Alice and her search for a feeling or understanding about a feeling, which she only vaguely realizes is there. She stumbles almost unwittingly from one death to another.

Tidying up - it had something to do with tidying up, putting things in order, the desire to know which assumptions one could lay aside, and which ones not yet. To see connections, or to see that there weren't any connections at all.

Hermann suggests that unresolved feelings about death can form the emotional core of a person's life. In Alice's case, it may have started with the death of her uncle before she was born. It's a plausible theory, but unconvincing here.

The devil in the translation

There is another problem and that is the translation.

Margot Bettauer Dembo is responsible for the English translations of all of Hermann's books and other work by the historian Joachim Fest, for instance, and the Turkish-German author, Feridun Zaimoglu.

Given Hermann's strict, cut-up style, it would have been a tough job to strike the correct tone. But Dembo's translation of "Alice" is often too close, too faithful, to the German.

"Alice realized that they were talking right past these things," is a line Dembo offers near the end. You can tell exactly what the German expression is - one that is never used in English. And the last thing you want when reading a translation is to hear the original language, replete with its very own syntax and sayings. It reads like too much connection in a narrative that doesn't have quite enough.

Author: Zulfikar Abbany

Editor: Kate Bowen