Novemberfest

by Theodore Weesner

Forty years after falling in love as a seventeen-year-old soldier with Germany and a beautiful married woman, a professor at a New Hampshire college relives his youth, reexamines his life, and tries to recapture his lost enthusiasm. 10,000 first printing.

386 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 1994

About the author

American author and Professor at Emerson College.

Reviews

[Charlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

In many ways this was a three star book . . . well-written with two stories being told here, one the story of a 50ish year old professor of German literature who doesn't get tenure and is suddenly lost, with no profession, a nasty wife who wants a divorce and a little 4 year old daughter that he loves very much. He then has an affair with an older student, a German separated from her American husband, who reminds him of the other story in the novel, his years in the Army in Germany as a 17 year old private and the affair with the "love of his life", a sophisticated older married German woman.
Stories and setting (both New Hampshire college and Germany) were interesting but the women in this story were not good characters, not sympathetic, not very well drawn. Even the 4 year old daughter didn't seem a plausible character. The part where he goes to Germany, just as the Berlin Wall falls and talks to his first love, while attending a conference for translators was interesting but just didn't seem to "happen naturally" as part of the story.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a very moving novel, both in terms of the plot and its pathos.