- Paperback: 96 pages
- Publisher: NYRB Classics (Nov 30 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1590170199
- ISBN-13: 978-1590170199
- Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 0.8 x 20.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 91 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#515,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #63 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics > German
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Library Journal
In this heartwrenching account of his mother's illness and death, avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright Handke (Once Again for Thucydides; Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays) details his struggle to tell the story of his mother's life and his relationship to her without turning it into an overwrought elegy. The result, first published in the United States in 1974 as part of a collection (this is the first time it has been published as a freestanding book), is indeed considered by most critics to be one of Handke's finest literary achievements, one that is much less abstract than much of his other writing. Seven weeks after his mother's suicide in 1971, Handke felt compelled to preserve his memories of her, of their life together during the postwar misery, and to record his rage over the problems that his mother left for him to solve after her death. Both his anger at this legacy and his admiration for his mother are obvious, and the essay is melancholy and lucid. Highly recommended for large public library and academic literary collections.
Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Peter Handke's mother was an invisible woman. Throughout her life—which spanned the Nazi era, the war, and the postwar consumer economy—she struggled to maintain appearances, only to arrive at a terrible recognition: "I'm not human any more." Not long after, she killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills.
In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessness—the extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer.
In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessness—the extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Sensitively Valuable Elegy,
By
This review is from: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Paperback)
With thanks to the New York Review Books, Peter Handke's A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS is once again available. This slim but pungent volume opens with an elegant introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides ( author of 'Middlesex' and 'The Virgin Suicides' ) and few writers could better place this memoir of Handke's response to his mother's suicide in 1971 in a more meaningful perspective.Handke writes about his mother in a way that creates a story rather than a history of a life. There is so much understantding of how the world changed from Pre-WW II through the post war emptiness of a desecrated Europe and its accompanying slow move toward healing that plagues burned countries after victories or defeats signalling the end of wars. Handke's mother remains nameless which serves to make her a more universal figure than just another individual. And using the word 'individual' is actually in contrast to the major problem of this tragic women's life. Always a women of poverty, suffering the cruelties that that station in life suggests (a fatherless child, a marriage of convenience that results in a life with an alcoholic husban, self induced abortions, begging for food, the lack of simple luxuries like Christmas gifts, etc) his mother was not a woman who considered herself an individual: she was a daughter of a postwar poverty and gloom, aligning herself with Socialism which further negated her worth as a unique person. Her gradual withdrawal in yet another group (those with 'nervous breakdowns') overtured her ultimate complete withdrawal from the world as she finds taking her own life the final solution to her grief. Handke reserves his own response to the loss of his mother until the end of this memoir - a section of memories, flashbacks, regrets and tears that force him to place his final godbyes in the form of the written word. The writing is powerful in its simplicity, unfettered by false emotions, straight forward in forcing both the author and the reader into confronting the tragedy of suicide. Perhaps many readers will use this short tome to find healing of like experiences: others will read this book simply because it is a beautifully constructed story of the life on an Everyman/woman. Highly Recommended.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Short,Brutal and Unforgettable,
By Alan M "margo64" (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Paperback)
Glad to see this back in print. I've relied on a library copy when I wanted to revisit it. Spend the hour or two it takes to read this and it will stick with you forever. I hope they've touched up the few missteps in Mannheim's translation. Otherwise, this near-perfect memoir puts most of its flabby and narcissistic successors (the list is endless) to shame.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The finest auto/biographical work I know,
By Jack Harms (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Paperback)
At once stark and lyrical, Handke's A SORROW BEYOND DREAMS is one of the finest memoirs I've read, and, without a doubt, the strongest portrait I know of a mother by her son--a portrait made strong, in part, by Handke's ability to see and analyze his mother's life within the context of the limited choices available to her, and by his ability to see the ways in which her life is molded by the "genre" of a life comparable to a woman of his mother's class and station. It is, too, at once loving and mercilessly painful. I'm not a great fan of Handke's--the intensity of his self-consciousness, or the cool ironic stances of his early work--but this brief book is an exception. Read it & you will be reading it again throughout your life.
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