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Vidurdienio moteris
Helenos vaikystė praėjo ramiame miestelyje, audžiant svaigias svajones apie didmiesčio galimybes ir anais laikais retai merginai pasiekiamas studijas. Tačiau kruopščiai statomas laimės laivas ima grimzti, kai Helena patiria mylimojo netektį. Nugriaudėja Antrasis pasaulinis karas. Bet ir jo akivaizdoje moteris nepraranda stiprybės, saugo svajones ir jausmus, kaip įmanydama išlaiko sūnų. Tik tada, kai karo baisumai ima trauktis praeitin, kai viskas, regis, darosi vėl įmanoma, ji palieka savo berniuką stotyje ir dingsta...
Kas atsitiko šios moters gyvenime? Kas ją privertė palikti sūnų, kurį išsaugojo sunkiu karo metu? Kas gali lemti nesuvokiamą sveikam protui žingsnį, griūvant pragarui, kurį jau perėjai?
Romanas „Vidurdienio moteris“ buvo įvertintas prestižine Vokietijos knygų premija.
„Knyga įtikina pasakojimo įtaigumu ir psichologiniu intensyvumu. Tai romanas, skatinantis jį aptarinėti.“ (Iš Vokietijos knygų premijos vertinimo komisijos komentaro.)
360 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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December 11, 2024
4,5🌟
"Die Mittagsfrau"
2007 ausgezeichnet mit dem deutschen Buchpreis, zeichnet das berührende Porträt einer jungen Frau in den 1920-und 1940 Jahren. Es spielt in Bautzen und Berlin, während der Weimarer Republik und der Nazizeit.
Der Buchtitel verweist auf einen slawischen Naturgeist, der während der Ernte erscheint und den Menschen den Verstand raubt. Julia Franck wählte diesen Titel aufgrund einer familiären Begebenheit.
Die Geschichte wird in drei Kaptiteln erzählt.
Helene, jüngste Tochter eines wohlhabenden Druckers in Bautzen, hochintelligent, träumt von einem Medizinstudium. Ihr Vater kommt aus dem ersten Weltkrieg und geht an seinen Verletzungen elend zugrunde. Die Mutter, Jüdin, verlor vier Söhne bei der Geburt und hat nur Augen für ihre älteste Tochter Martha, die 9 Jahre älter ist als Helene.
Helene, als junge Frau, verbringt die "Goldenen Zwanziger " mit ihrer Schwester in Berlin. Sie findet ihre große Liebe, die tragisch endet. Der zweite Weltkrieg beginnt und sie schlägt sich als Krankenschwester durch.
Helene, nun Alice, heiratet nach schweren Depressionen, den Nazi Wilhelm. Es ist eine Vernunftehe aus der ihr Sohn Peter hervorgeht, den sie später allein auf einem Bahnsteig zurücklässt.
Es passiert viel in diesen 429 Seiten.
Ein Gesellschaftsgroman, der nur so von Ereignissen und Gefühlen strotzt. Eine sehr berührende und intensive Geschichte, die auch viele Klischees bedient und hier und da auch überfrachtet ist, was dem ganzen aber für mich keinen Abbruch tat.
Es geht um Moral, weibliche Identität, innere Konflikte und emotionale Bindungen aber auch um Judenverfolgung und das Chaos des Krieges.
Ergreifend, traurig, spannend, verstörend und nüchtern erzählt Julia Franck diese fiktive Geschichte und zeichnet dabei ihre Figuren glaubhaft. Es entstehen viele Bilder und leise Momente, bei denen ich selbst beobachten konnte. Atmosphärisch dicht und sprachlich emotional.
Für mich ein kleines Lesehighlight zum Ende des Jahres!
"Die Mittagsfrau"
2007 ausgezeichnet mit dem deutschen Buchpreis, zeichnet das berührende Porträt einer jungen Frau in den 1920-und 1940 Jahren. Es spielt in Bautzen und Berlin, während der Weimarer Republik und der Nazizeit.
Der Buchtitel verweist auf einen slawischen Naturgeist, der während der Ernte erscheint und den Menschen den Verstand raubt. Julia Franck wählte diesen Titel aufgrund einer familiären Begebenheit.
Die Geschichte wird in drei Kaptiteln erzählt.
Helene, jüngste Tochter eines wohlhabenden Druckers in Bautzen, hochintelligent, träumt von einem Medizinstudium. Ihr Vater kommt aus dem ersten Weltkrieg und geht an seinen Verletzungen elend zugrunde. Die Mutter, Jüdin, verlor vier Söhne bei der Geburt und hat nur Augen für ihre älteste Tochter Martha, die 9 Jahre älter ist als Helene.
Helene, als junge Frau, verbringt die "Goldenen Zwanziger " mit ihrer Schwester in Berlin. Sie findet ihre große Liebe, die tragisch endet. Der zweite Weltkrieg beginnt und sie schlägt sich als Krankenschwester durch.
Helene, nun Alice, heiratet nach schweren Depressionen, den Nazi Wilhelm. Es ist eine Vernunftehe aus der ihr Sohn Peter hervorgeht, den sie später allein auf einem Bahnsteig zurücklässt.
Es passiert viel in diesen 429 Seiten.
Ein Gesellschaftsgroman, der nur so von Ereignissen und Gefühlen strotzt. Eine sehr berührende und intensive Geschichte, die auch viele Klischees bedient und hier und da auch überfrachtet ist, was dem ganzen aber für mich keinen Abbruch tat.
Es geht um Moral, weibliche Identität, innere Konflikte und emotionale Bindungen aber auch um Judenverfolgung und das Chaos des Krieges.
Ergreifend, traurig, spannend, verstörend und nüchtern erzählt Julia Franck diese fiktive Geschichte und zeichnet dabei ihre Figuren glaubhaft. Es entstehen viele Bilder und leise Momente, bei denen ich selbst beobachten konnte. Atmosphärisch dicht und sprachlich emotional.
Für mich ein kleines Lesehighlight zum Ende des Jahres!
May 15, 2012
The author, German novelist Julia Franck (born 1970) was 39 years old when this book, The Blind Side of the Heart was first published in German language. Its milieu is Germany in between the two world wars and I could not help but be amazed how intricate Franck was able to weave her story considering that she was not born yet at that time. It was the same awe that I had, almost a decade ago, while reading Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War about French trench warfare when its author, Sebastian Faulks (born 1953), did not even witness any of the two world wars. For me, the ability to beautifully write on something that one has no first-hand experience is a mark of a good novelist.
This is the story of Helene who is a mixed race (half-Aryan/half-Jew), and works as a nurse in Berlin during World War II. She has to change his name to Alice and assume a different identity. Her fiance forges her papers declaring that she is a pure Aryan descent so she can survive persecution during the Holocaust.
There is nothing new about the storyline, you say? Maybe for you but not for me. I've read many books, The Story of the Young Girl, Night, Fatelessness, A Man Search for Meaning and I Shall Bear Witness and they are all about the Holocaust victims and their experience during the war. The Blind Side of the Heart stands on the other side: the Germans, mixed or pure, who shouted "Kill the Jews!" It's just that being a mixed blood, Helene even tells her seven-year old son, Peter to stop ridiculing his Jewish classmates. The story is an eye-opener for me because it never came to me, until while reading the book, that the world got transfixed with the Holocaust victims and did not bother appreciating what the good-natured Germans thought, felt and did while Hitler's atrocities were going on. It was also a big help for me that I read The Burden of Guilt: A Short History of Germany, 1914-1945 by Hanna Vogt prior to this book so I exactly knew what exactly went on in this book's backdrop.
I also appreciated the "hook" that Franck used at the start. The first chapter tells about Alice, the mother, abandoning his child, 11-year old Peter, in a railway station. The chapter closes with Peter washing himself after peeing while waiting for his mother overnight and not leaving his seat hoping that her mother would come back. Then all the chapters except the last one are flashback of the mother's life who is called Helene. So, while reading, I was waiting and hoping to encounter the names Peter and Alice. It was towards the end when Helene became Alice and so I said, "So this is the mother!" and then on the very last chapter, Peter, already a young man, reappeared. I mean the "hook" trick worked for me because I waited and waited and because of Franck's skillful storytelling, there was no boring moment. There are some philosophical musings, courtesy of Helene's doctor-scholar fiance, Carl and husband-wife power struggle, courtesy of Helene's husband Wilhelm but they are tackled by showing and not by telling. In other words, you have to deduce the themes by yourself and Franck's is not preachy in expressing her views on these themes. In fact, you would not feel that the book is about racism except for the small incidents scattered in the main storyline like a Jewish boy mauled by soldiers for stealing food and Helene is a spectator instead of the main actor. Very clever and fresh approach. It does not leave you breathless, sad, and with a heavy heart like the usual Holocaust-victim stories. Rather, it is just a pure enjoyable engaging yet intelligent read.
This is the story of Helene who is a mixed race (half-Aryan/half-Jew), and works as a nurse in Berlin during World War II. She has to change his name to Alice and assume a different identity. Her fiance forges her papers declaring that she is a pure Aryan descent so she can survive persecution during the Holocaust.
There is nothing new about the storyline, you say? Maybe for you but not for me. I've read many books, The Story of the Young Girl, Night, Fatelessness, A Man Search for Meaning and I Shall Bear Witness and they are all about the Holocaust victims and their experience during the war. The Blind Side of the Heart stands on the other side: the Germans, mixed or pure, who shouted "Kill the Jews!" It's just that being a mixed blood, Helene even tells her seven-year old son, Peter to stop ridiculing his Jewish classmates. The story is an eye-opener for me because it never came to me, until while reading the book, that the world got transfixed with the Holocaust victims and did not bother appreciating what the good-natured Germans thought, felt and did while Hitler's atrocities were going on. It was also a big help for me that I read The Burden of Guilt: A Short History of Germany, 1914-1945 by Hanna Vogt prior to this book so I exactly knew what exactly went on in this book's backdrop.
I also appreciated the "hook" that Franck used at the start. The first chapter tells about Alice, the mother, abandoning his child, 11-year old Peter, in a railway station. The chapter closes with Peter washing himself after peeing while waiting for his mother overnight and not leaving his seat hoping that her mother would come back. Then all the chapters except the last one are flashback of the mother's life who is called Helene. So, while reading, I was waiting and hoping to encounter the names Peter and Alice. It was towards the end when Helene became Alice and so I said, "So this is the mother!" and then on the very last chapter, Peter, already a young man, reappeared. I mean the "hook" trick worked for me because I waited and waited and because of Franck's skillful storytelling, there was no boring moment. There are some philosophical musings, courtesy of Helene's doctor-scholar fiance, Carl and husband-wife power struggle, courtesy of Helene's husband Wilhelm but they are tackled by showing and not by telling. In other words, you have to deduce the themes by yourself and Franck's is not preachy in expressing her views on these themes. In fact, you would not feel that the book is about racism except for the small incidents scattered in the main storyline like a Jewish boy mauled by soldiers for stealing food and Helene is a spectator instead of the main actor. Very clever and fresh approach. It does not leave you breathless, sad, and with a heavy heart like the usual Holocaust-victim stories. Rather, it is just a pure enjoyable engaging yet intelligent read.
September 1, 2022
2007 hat "Die Mittagsfrau" von Julia Franck den Deutschen Buchpreis erhalten. Da mir die 2022-Liste der nominierten Bücher zu großen Teilen nicht gefällt, schien jetzt eine gute Zeit zu sein, diesen Roman nachzuholen. Das hat sich als eine sehr gute Entscheidung erwiesen. Der erste Satz hat mich zunächst abgeschreckt. Aber ab dem dritten Satz "Seit der Krieg zu Ende war, genoss Peter die Stille am Morgen." war ich im Text angekommen. Julia Franck schafft es dann die Spannung auf den nächsten 430 Seiten zu halten. Es ist eines der wenigen Bücher, in dem ein Prolog für mich funktioniert, da er die Geschichte verstärkt. Man möchte unbedingt wissen, wie es zu dem Ereignis im Prolog kommen konnte. Es gibt nur wenige Längen, die man aufgrund dieser Neugier schnell überwindet. Eine Leseempfehlung.
July 6, 2016
In the original German version, so I’ve been told, the title of this book is Die Mittagsfrau, or “The Noonday Witch”. According to legend, the witch appears in the heat of day to spirit away children from their distracted parents. Those who are able to engage the witch in a short conversation find that her witch-like powers evaporate.
In Julia Franck’s brilliant English version (translated by the very talented Anthea Bell), Helene gradually retreats into silence and passivity, losing her ability to communicate effectively. We meet her in the book’s prologue as the mother of an eight-year-old boy, leading her son towards a packed train in the direction of Berlin. Before the train arrives she tells him a white lie, abandoning him at a bench, never to return. In the succeeding 400 pages, the reader gains a glimpse as to what drove Helene to this most unnatural act.
Helene is born into a family that defines the word “dysfunction”. Her charismatic, morphine-addicted older sister Martha engages her in an incestuous relationship. Her mentally unbalanced “foreign” (i.e., Jewish mother) is unable to connect with her two daughters, totally distancing from them when their father goes off to fight the Great War and becomes grievously injured. When the two sisters gain the chance to flee to Berlin, they grab it and train as nurses, exposing them to the pain of their patients and also giving them ready access to drugs.
Martha fits right into the debauchery and frantic partying of a decaying Berlin with her enlightened free-thinking friend and physician-lover, Leontine, but Helene is far more circumspect and sensitive. Her one enduring love is a philosophy student named Carl who also feels deeply and tells her, “The God principle is built on pain. Only if pain were obliterated from the world could we speak of the death of God.” When he is gone from the scene, she is unable to protect herself from victimization, occurring time and time again, with sexual predators and the cruel man she eventually marries.
As readers, we watch helplessly as Helene becomes increasingly detached, her heart becoming cold and numb. So it is no surprise when she concludes of her son, “…she had nothing more for him, her words were all used up long ago, she had neither bread nor an hour’s time for him, there was nothing of her left for the child.”
As the book progresses, the reader is forced to adapt an omnipotent stance; we know the consequence of some of the characters’ decisions and the genocide that will soon follow, but we are powerless to guide the characters through. Julia Franck instructs through omission as much as she does the details. When Helene calls Berlin to speak to Martha and gets no answer, we as readers are reasonably sure what has occurred. But it is never confirmed. As a result, as Helene goes numb, we begin to understand. And we begin to gain some compassion for an act that virtually all mothers would consider unforgiveable.
There is a menacing, ever-shifting quality that pervades the book, become more and more pronounced as Hitler rises in power. There is no black-and-white morality or easy outcomes; there are simply all kinds of loss – loss of one’s sanity, loss of innocence, loss of love, loss of the natural order of things, loss of hope. The more the characters lose, the more they must abandon. In many ways, we know they are already as good as gone.
In Julia Franck’s brilliant English version (translated by the very talented Anthea Bell), Helene gradually retreats into silence and passivity, losing her ability to communicate effectively. We meet her in the book’s prologue as the mother of an eight-year-old boy, leading her son towards a packed train in the direction of Berlin. Before the train arrives she tells him a white lie, abandoning him at a bench, never to return. In the succeeding 400 pages, the reader gains a glimpse as to what drove Helene to this most unnatural act.
Helene is born into a family that defines the word “dysfunction”. Her charismatic, morphine-addicted older sister Martha engages her in an incestuous relationship. Her mentally unbalanced “foreign” (i.e., Jewish mother) is unable to connect with her two daughters, totally distancing from them when their father goes off to fight the Great War and becomes grievously injured. When the two sisters gain the chance to flee to Berlin, they grab it and train as nurses, exposing them to the pain of their patients and also giving them ready access to drugs.
Martha fits right into the debauchery and frantic partying of a decaying Berlin with her enlightened free-thinking friend and physician-lover, Leontine, but Helene is far more circumspect and sensitive. Her one enduring love is a philosophy student named Carl who also feels deeply and tells her, “The God principle is built on pain. Only if pain were obliterated from the world could we speak of the death of God.” When he is gone from the scene, she is unable to protect herself from victimization, occurring time and time again, with sexual predators and the cruel man she eventually marries.
As readers, we watch helplessly as Helene becomes increasingly detached, her heart becoming cold and numb. So it is no surprise when she concludes of her son, “…she had nothing more for him, her words were all used up long ago, she had neither bread nor an hour’s time for him, there was nothing of her left for the child.”
As the book progresses, the reader is forced to adapt an omnipotent stance; we know the consequence of some of the characters’ decisions and the genocide that will soon follow, but we are powerless to guide the characters through. Julia Franck instructs through omission as much as she does the details. When Helene calls Berlin to speak to Martha and gets no answer, we as readers are reasonably sure what has occurred. But it is never confirmed. As a result, as Helene goes numb, we begin to understand. And we begin to gain some compassion for an act that virtually all mothers would consider unforgiveable.
There is a menacing, ever-shifting quality that pervades the book, become more and more pronounced as Hitler rises in power. There is no black-and-white morality or easy outcomes; there are simply all kinds of loss – loss of one’s sanity, loss of innocence, loss of love, loss of the natural order of things, loss of hope. The more the characters lose, the more they must abandon. In many ways, we know they are already as good as gone.
January 22, 2021
Nach dem Krieg verlässt eine Mutter mit ihrem siebenjährigen Sohn Stettin. In Vorpommern auf einem Bahnhof soll der Sohn warten, aber die Mutter kommt nie wieder, sie hat ihn verlassen. Das ist der Beginn des Romans und genau das ist dem Vater der Autorin passiert. Als es Julia Franck gelingt, den Verbleib der Großmutter ausfindig zu machen, ist diese bereits verstorben, so dass sich nicht klären ließ, warum sie ihren Sohn im Stich ließ. Der Roman ist der Versuch, eine Geschichte zu erzählen, die die Ungeheuerlichkeit verständlich macht und die gleichzeitig Schicksale in der Zeit zwischen und in den Weltkriegen zeigt.
Ich fand den Werdegang der Mutter ungeheuer glaubhaft. Schritt für Schritt entwickelt sich die Protagonistin so, dass der letzte Schritt unausweichlich wurde. Dabei handelt sie nie dumm oder der Situation unangemessen, sie macht aus allem das Beste und hat doch keine echte Wahl. Angesichts anderer Schicksale zu dieser Zeit, könnte man meinen, dass sie sogar Glück hatte bzw. dass alles noch viel schlimmer hätte kommen können, falls sich Leid überhaupt vergleichen lässt. Die Suche nach einem anderen Ausweg geistert immer noch in meinem Kopf herum, aber es gab keine Weichen, die anders hätten gestellt werden können.
Auch ohne den persönlichen Bezug zur Autorin funktioniert der Roman. Man begreift anhand von Einzelbeispielen wie das Leben zwischen etwa 1912 und 1945 gewesen sein muss, welche Auswirkungen die Weltwirtschaftskrise hatte, wie das Leben in Bautzen, Berlin oder Stettin in bestimmten Schichten ablief. Man erfährt etwas über die Nachwirkungen fehlender Mutterliebe, über verschiedene Geschlechterrollen und -bilder, über Vorurteile und Ausgrenzung und darüber, wie die Gedankenwelt des Nationalsozialismus den gesamten Alltag beherrschte.
Julia Franck kann sehr einfühlsam glaubhafte Charaktere entwickeln, die Sprache bildhaft und liest sich gut. Eine wenig störte mich die sehr häufige Namensnennung, ich kann mich bei anderen Büchern an das gleiche „Problemchen“ erinnern. Zwischenzeitlich in Berlin hatte das Buch ein paar Längen und vielleicht auch ein paar Themen zu viel auf eine Person projiziert, aber kurz danach nahm die Geschichte wieder Fahrt auf und entfaltete einen regelrechten Sog.
Insgesamt ein Buch, das wohl niemanden kalt lässt und unbedingt empfehlenswert ist.
Ich fand den Werdegang der Mutter ungeheuer glaubhaft. Schritt für Schritt entwickelt sich die Protagonistin so, dass der letzte Schritt unausweichlich wurde. Dabei handelt sie nie dumm oder der Situation unangemessen, sie macht aus allem das Beste und hat doch keine echte Wahl. Angesichts anderer Schicksale zu dieser Zeit, könnte man meinen, dass sie sogar Glück hatte bzw. dass alles noch viel schlimmer hätte kommen können, falls sich Leid überhaupt vergleichen lässt. Die Suche nach einem anderen Ausweg geistert immer noch in meinem Kopf herum, aber es gab keine Weichen, die anders hätten gestellt werden können.
Auch ohne den persönlichen Bezug zur Autorin funktioniert der Roman. Man begreift anhand von Einzelbeispielen wie das Leben zwischen etwa 1912 und 1945 gewesen sein muss, welche Auswirkungen die Weltwirtschaftskrise hatte, wie das Leben in Bautzen, Berlin oder Stettin in bestimmten Schichten ablief. Man erfährt etwas über die Nachwirkungen fehlender Mutterliebe, über verschiedene Geschlechterrollen und -bilder, über Vorurteile und Ausgrenzung und darüber, wie die Gedankenwelt des Nationalsozialismus den gesamten Alltag beherrschte.
Julia Franck kann sehr einfühlsam glaubhafte Charaktere entwickeln, die Sprache bildhaft und liest sich gut. Eine wenig störte mich die sehr häufige Namensnennung, ich kann mich bei anderen Büchern an das gleiche „Problemchen“ erinnern. Zwischenzeitlich in Berlin hatte das Buch ein paar Längen und vielleicht auch ein paar Themen zu viel auf eine Person projiziert, aber kurz danach nahm die Geschichte wieder Fahrt auf und entfaltete einen regelrechten Sog.
Insgesamt ein Buch, das wohl niemanden kalt lässt und unbedingt empfehlenswert ist.
November 26, 2011
Everyone seems to love this book. It's being compared with Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but I don't see it. The story was gripping, but I didn't like any of the characters, not even the little boy. I couldn't care less about this woman and I was angry that she repeated her own mother's faults. I did finish it because it was for my bookclub, but if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have finished it.
I really don't mind drama in a book, terrible things happen, but I at least want to sympathize with one character and there was just nothing to hold on to. I understand that that is the attraction for a lot of people, but not for me. A very depressing book....
I really don't mind drama in a book, terrible things happen, but I at least want to sympathize with one character and there was just nothing to hold on to. I understand that that is the attraction for a lot of people, but not for me. A very depressing book....
February 8, 2022
Böyle kitapların artık baskılarının olmayışı üzücü, hele ki baskısı yapılan bazılarını gördükten sonra. Julia Frank, bu romanıyla 2007 Alman Kitap Ödülü’nü almış, diğer adayları bilmiyorum ama bu kitap ödül hak edecek bir kitap gerçekten de. Tabii ki çevirmen İlknur İgan da büyük iş yapmış, tertemiz bir çeviri sunmuş.
Kitapların arka kapaklarını genellikle bitirince okuyan bir okuyucuyum. Öğlen Kadını’na isim itibari ile farklı tahminler ile başladım, farklı bir konuda buldum kendimi. Bitirince nasıl da yerini bulmuş bir isim diyorum şimdi. Kitabı okumak isteyenler olursa diye daha fazlasını yazmasam iyi.
II. Dünya Savaşı’nın etrafında şekillenen hayatların anlatısı gibi duran ancak içinde derinlikler barındıran bir roman. “Güçlü bir kadın” olarak anlatılan ana karakterin çocuk, sevgili, eş ve anne olarak hayatının akışını gözler önüne koyuyor. Ama ne hayat…
Duygu yoğun, sessiz ve bir o kadar da sesli bir kitaptı. Pek beğendim. Bitirdiğimde bende karmaşık duygular bırakan eserleri seviyorum.
Kitapların arka kapaklarını genellikle bitirince okuyan bir okuyucuyum. Öğlen Kadını’na isim itibari ile farklı tahminler ile başladım, farklı bir konuda buldum kendimi. Bitirince nasıl da yerini bulmuş bir isim diyorum şimdi. Kitabı okumak isteyenler olursa diye daha fazlasını yazmasam iyi.
II. Dünya Savaşı’nın etrafında şekillenen hayatların anlatısı gibi duran ancak içinde derinlikler barındıran bir roman. “Güçlü bir kadın” olarak anlatılan ana karakterin çocuk, sevgili, eş ve anne olarak hayatının akışını gözler önüne koyuyor. Ama ne hayat…
Duygu yoğun, sessiz ve bir o kadar da sesli bir kitaptı. Pek beğendim. Bitirdiğimde bende karmaşık duygular bırakan eserleri seviyorum.
October 27, 2010
Julia Franck's novel, DIE MITTAGSFRAU, published in English under the title "Blindness of the Heart: A Novel" starts dramatically with a Prologue in which a young mother leaves her seven-year old son at a remote railway station in eastern Germany and disappears... The time is 1945, the war has ended and the two have to flee west ahead of Soviet troops taking over the city. The author, captivated by her own father's childhood trauma, took the search for possible explanations for her grandmother's behaviour, as a starting point for her book. The resulting novel has turned into a fictional, wide-ranging psychological portrait of a complex and emotionally shattered young woman, who lived through two world wars and, for her not less dramatic, the time in between. Franck's novel is a thought-provoking and, at times, unsettling and disturbing story of one person's deep love and loss, loneliness and rejection, responsibility and neglect, and the desperate, sometimes incomprehensible, will to survive. In a way, the novel effectively provides the back story to the young mother and aims to clarify if not justify why a young mother abandons her beloved child after all they have been through together.
While primarily focusing on the portrayal of the young mother, Helene, and her difficult relationships to her family and close surroundings, the author, nevertheless, reaches beyond the private and individual sphere into the depiction of sections of a society in chaos and upheaval. This applies especially to the Berlin's "Golden Twenties". Franck goes into some length in bringing to life the exuberant, careless and, with hindsight, totally naive behaviour of the bourgeois middle class. Any political events or references to changing economic conditions, that give the reader a sense of passing time, are only hinted at obliquely. In her description of individuals and scenarios, the author doesn't shy away from a certain amount of stereotyping. For her, Helene remains the silent observer as she feels increasingly alienated and retreats more and more into herself. Until she meets her great love, Carl, but even in this relationship one can detect certain clichés. While their happiness takes on the shape of a fairytale, the reader knows full well, given the events recounted upfront in the Prologue that some drama will destroy whatever hope Helene had for a happier life...
Reading BLINDNESS OF THE HEART as a psychological portrait of one young woman, half-Jewish, intelligent and beautiful, whose circumstances may not have been unique, but were by no means common, I could relate to and empathize with Franck's central character most of the time. As an illustration of the total disintegration of sectors of German society in the twenties and thirties, in particular, I found the novel lacking in depth and specifics. For a German reader, many place names, such as Bautzen, Stettin, Pirna (where Selma is taken for treatment), etc. have strong historical connotations. Bautzen, where Helene grew up, is synonymous with brutal imprisonment, whether during the Nazi regime or later, until the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Stettin (Szczecin), where Helene lived until her flight to the West was, during the Third Reich, a centre for forced labour and prison transports into nearby concentration camps. Pirna is known for its "Sanatorium" where thousands of inmates were murdered during the early 1940s. However, Franck gives no indication as to the realities surrounding Helene, nor that her heroine was to any degree aware of such realities.
DIE MITTAGSFRAU is Julia Franck's fourth novel and winner of the German Book Prize 2007. Frank's language is somewhat unusual, not only has it a touch of the old fashioned stories from the Eastern regions of Germany, it is at times, and in contrast with the event described, poetic in its choice of words and expressions. The complete absence of any punctuation in direct speech, is unusual, yet eventually, it makes the text flow and creates immediacy beyond speech. It may be helpful to add is a comment on the German title. Literally translated the word means "midday woman" or "midday wife", which, however would not have any meaning. However, the word describes a fable character out of the west-Slavic tradition where it refers to an evil spirit like a "midday witch". She appears during the noon hour on the hot harvesting days and affects those out in the field. They can go crazy or even die when approached by her. The only remedy to protect oneself or heal is by talking to her spirit about the harvest throughout the hour of noon to one. The question remains in the reader, whether Helene, the central character was touched by the witch and if so, whether she found a way to protect herself.
While primarily focusing on the portrayal of the young mother, Helene, and her difficult relationships to her family and close surroundings, the author, nevertheless, reaches beyond the private and individual sphere into the depiction of sections of a society in chaos and upheaval. This applies especially to the Berlin's "Golden Twenties". Franck goes into some length in bringing to life the exuberant, careless and, with hindsight, totally naive behaviour of the bourgeois middle class. Any political events or references to changing economic conditions, that give the reader a sense of passing time, are only hinted at obliquely. In her description of individuals and scenarios, the author doesn't shy away from a certain amount of stereotyping. For her, Helene remains the silent observer as she feels increasingly alienated and retreats more and more into herself. Until she meets her great love, Carl, but even in this relationship one can detect certain clichés. While their happiness takes on the shape of a fairytale, the reader knows full well, given the events recounted upfront in the Prologue that some drama will destroy whatever hope Helene had for a happier life...
Reading BLINDNESS OF THE HEART as a psychological portrait of one young woman, half-Jewish, intelligent and beautiful, whose circumstances may not have been unique, but were by no means common, I could relate to and empathize with Franck's central character most of the time. As an illustration of the total disintegration of sectors of German society in the twenties and thirties, in particular, I found the novel lacking in depth and specifics. For a German reader, many place names, such as Bautzen, Stettin, Pirna (where Selma is taken for treatment), etc. have strong historical connotations. Bautzen, where Helene grew up, is synonymous with brutal imprisonment, whether during the Nazi regime or later, until the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Stettin (Szczecin), where Helene lived until her flight to the West was, during the Third Reich, a centre for forced labour and prison transports into nearby concentration camps. Pirna is known for its "Sanatorium" where thousands of inmates were murdered during the early 1940s. However, Franck gives no indication as to the realities surrounding Helene, nor that her heroine was to any degree aware of such realities.
DIE MITTAGSFRAU is Julia Franck's fourth novel and winner of the German Book Prize 2007. Frank's language is somewhat unusual, not only has it a touch of the old fashioned stories from the Eastern regions of Germany, it is at times, and in contrast with the event described, poetic in its choice of words and expressions. The complete absence of any punctuation in direct speech, is unusual, yet eventually, it makes the text flow and creates immediacy beyond speech. It may be helpful to add is a comment on the German title. Literally translated the word means "midday woman" or "midday wife", which, however would not have any meaning. However, the word describes a fable character out of the west-Slavic tradition where it refers to an evil spirit like a "midday witch". She appears during the noon hour on the hot harvesting days and affects those out in the field. They can go crazy or even die when approached by her. The only remedy to protect oneself or heal is by talking to her spirit about the harvest throughout the hour of noon to one. The question remains in the reader, whether Helene, the central character was touched by the witch and if so, whether she found a way to protect herself.
November 17, 2010
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Winner of the German Book Prize
Most novels that explore the events of the Holocaust focus on the ‘Before’ and ‘After’-showing the events chronologically and the resulting impact. However, The Blindness of the Heart takes a reverse approach and begins by revealing a disturbing ‘After’: a young woman abandons her young son at a train station and disappears. We see how they’ve lived in horror for months, but his abandonment is still shocking. Then the author, Julia Franck, takes us back in time to the early years of this young woman, and the events that lead up to a lost little boy, confused, hungry and alone.
The mother is Helene, and her family is dysfunctional and damaged long before the Holocaust begins. Her identity as a person is in question before her identity as a Jew becomes relevant. As a nurse she helps care for her ailing father while trying to deal with her mentally ill mother. She thinks she finds a future, but nearly everything she is close to is taken away. She finds a way out of the impending doom by marrying a German who helps her with false papers that identify her as Anna, a German citizen, but their marriage yields nothing but the child. She raises him alone while working long hours in the hospital, assisting German doctors in the maternity ward, as well as in the forced sterilization of some female patients. Her son, Peter, is often left alone while she works, and while they remain together it’s clear she’s drifted away long before she leaves him literally.
The book is incredibly painful. A few times I put it down just to get away from the grief. The author makes a tremendous gamble by having her lead character do something that appears unforgiveable right off the bat. She is counting on the reader to ponder the back story and conditions of the woman’s life and see if her decision made sense. She shows how emotionally abandoned Helene had been, and the ugliness that fills her life. The problem is, despite Helene’s previous suffering, it’s very difficult to get over the impact of the first few pages of the book. The result is a tension that carries through the book and makes the narrative so compelling.
One factor I found fascinating was the details of the nurses and their struggles in Germany. The endless shifts, multiple duties, and repellent activities in their wards were well detailed, and a part of Nazi history that I wasn’t aware of. The fact that Helene works with new mothers is a link emotionally with her own insane mother and her own flawed nurturing. What motherhood means is an underlying theme, and the title makes you consider what kind of love is blind.
Additionally, Franck creates an unforgettably tense scene in which the hungry mother and son go mushroom hunting, and find themselves in flight to escape hunters that are not after animal prey. As she runs frantically, she appears to be hallucinating as she considers her escape route, Peter’s whereabouts, and the various ingredients for different recipes to cook, all spinning through her head at once. Her actions in the forest foreshadow what is to come.
In a few places I found Helene/Anna’s character to be incredibly cold. I understand that under her circumstances, self-preservation required her to withdraw emotionally. And very few aspects of her life were really under her control. Yet there was an element of simple kindness she seemed to lack, or perhaps, it was all used up. In any case, the glimpse we get of Peter's future shows how the cycle of pain is completed.
Winner of the German Book Prize
Most novels that explore the events of the Holocaust focus on the ‘Before’ and ‘After’-showing the events chronologically and the resulting impact. However, The Blindness of the Heart takes a reverse approach and begins by revealing a disturbing ‘After’: a young woman abandons her young son at a train station and disappears. We see how they’ve lived in horror for months, but his abandonment is still shocking. Then the author, Julia Franck, takes us back in time to the early years of this young woman, and the events that lead up to a lost little boy, confused, hungry and alone.
The mother is Helene, and her family is dysfunctional and damaged long before the Holocaust begins. Her identity as a person is in question before her identity as a Jew becomes relevant. As a nurse she helps care for her ailing father while trying to deal with her mentally ill mother. She thinks she finds a future, but nearly everything she is close to is taken away. She finds a way out of the impending doom by marrying a German who helps her with false papers that identify her as Anna, a German citizen, but their marriage yields nothing but the child. She raises him alone while working long hours in the hospital, assisting German doctors in the maternity ward, as well as in the forced sterilization of some female patients. Her son, Peter, is often left alone while she works, and while they remain together it’s clear she’s drifted away long before she leaves him literally.
The book is incredibly painful. A few times I put it down just to get away from the grief. The author makes a tremendous gamble by having her lead character do something that appears unforgiveable right off the bat. She is counting on the reader to ponder the back story and conditions of the woman’s life and see if her decision made sense. She shows how emotionally abandoned Helene had been, and the ugliness that fills her life. The problem is, despite Helene’s previous suffering, it’s very difficult to get over the impact of the first few pages of the book. The result is a tension that carries through the book and makes the narrative so compelling.
One factor I found fascinating was the details of the nurses and their struggles in Germany. The endless shifts, multiple duties, and repellent activities in their wards were well detailed, and a part of Nazi history that I wasn’t aware of. The fact that Helene works with new mothers is a link emotionally with her own insane mother and her own flawed nurturing. What motherhood means is an underlying theme, and the title makes you consider what kind of love is blind.
Additionally, Franck creates an unforgettably tense scene in which the hungry mother and son go mushroom hunting, and find themselves in flight to escape hunters that are not after animal prey. As she runs frantically, she appears to be hallucinating as she considers her escape route, Peter’s whereabouts, and the various ingredients for different recipes to cook, all spinning through her head at once. Her actions in the forest foreshadow what is to come.
In a few places I found Helene/Anna’s character to be incredibly cold. I understand that under her circumstances, self-preservation required her to withdraw emotionally. And very few aspects of her life were really under her control. Yet there was an element of simple kindness she seemed to lack, or perhaps, it was all used up. In any case, the glimpse we get of Peter's future shows how the cycle of pain is completed.
July 24, 2011
Ein großartiger Roman über ein kompliziertes Mutter-Tochter-Verhältnis, Geschwisterliebe, eine ungewöhnlich zarte Liebe im Berlin der 20er Jahre, über verleugnete jüdische Identität, Verlust und Unmöglichkeit von Nähe. Wunderbar wird die zugleich faszinierende und abstoßende Sammlung seltsamer Dinge der verrückten Mutter beschrieben; beeindruckend sind auch die Schilderungen Berlins, oft ohne die Sache direkt zu benennen, z. B. besucht die Hauptfigur die Inszenierung der Dreigroschenoper und diskutiert mit ihrem Verlobten darüber – ohne dass der Titel oder der Name Brecht fallen.
August 23, 2011
I read through some of the reviews for this book. I'm always amazed at what some readers think. Books, clearly, touch us in different ways. This book has been described as disturbing, haunting, and shocking. It is all of those and more. What moved me about this book was the evolution of the character Helene as she changed in response to tragic events, how she moves from a bright, energetic, ambitious girl to a cold, distant, lonely, cruel, burdened mother. The contrast between the girl's outlook and the woman she becomes as a consequence of experiences, really outside her control, is brilliantly provocative. Her loss of innocence is so subtle, creeping up on you slowly, so that you find yourself sympathetic to the cold, cruel even soulless mother she becomes. You think if only her son knew what we knew about his mother, justifying the unforgivable cruelty. But we mustn't lose ourselves to it (perhaps like Germany did to horrors of Nazism), it remains unforgivable as Peter exhibits. If this isn't enough, all the story unfolds during the colorful Weimar years and the ominous rise of National Socialism, sandwiched between WWI and the Soviet occupation following WWII. It's hard not to see Helene's life as a metaphor for Germany and her people: the ambition and vitality of the Weimer years, the felt pragmatic inevitability and naivete of Nazism, the complacent determinative acceptance of the war and the costs it brings, and the final loss of one's soul as one becomes an empty, defeated shell both literally and figuratively raped by one's conquerors.
May 11, 2016
Why One Writes
You often see reviewers praising a book with the words "this is why one reads." Here is a book that turns upon a different question: why the author writes. This is my second attempt at a review of it, and I think my reasons for making the change are important. I would not want other readers to be led astray by Amazon's marketing as I was when I first read it, and expect a novel about moral degeneration in Germany during the interwar years, only to criticize the author for not succeeding. Alerted by another reader, I have since read a German-language interview in which the author reveals that her interest was not societal at all; instead, she was telling the story of a single character, inspired by a connection that was intensely personal. So now I am trying again. Why an author writes makes all the difference.
The book opens with a surely-unforgivable act: a mother leaves her young son at a railroad station promising to come back for him, but never does. The year is 1945. The place is Stettin, now in Poland, but then on the eastern border of a defeated Germany overrun by the Russians. The child witnesses his mother's forced surrender to the sex-starved victors, but Franck's truly unforgettable image is of one of those soldiers, naked except for his helmet, hidden behind the door, legs drawn up, head in his hands, sitting on the floor sobbing. The detail is striking precisely because it seems to contradict the brutality of the rest; the tragedy of war is not merely for the vanquished.
If the whole novel were as good as its prologue, it would be tremendous. There is a real moral question here: what can have happened for such a breakdown of values to occur? Looking back now over my original Amazon review, since transported here, I see that I perhaps gave more details than some readers would like; hence the spoiler warning.
If Franck was writing to gain some sympathy with her protagonist, she ultimately succeeds, but I am not convinced she can draw a connected line from beginning to end. It seems to me that the nearer she comes to the final horror, the more she must rely on external circumstance rather than internal choice, and the faster she must move. I also question whether it should be necessary to read an interview to understand the personal nature of the writing. The prologue is so searing that there is no doubt as to its immediacy. But there are long stretches in the middle where that sense of connection is lost. Perhaps some horrors are so intrinsically inconceivable that they defeat even such an imaginative writer?
You often see reviewers praising a book with the words "this is why one reads." Here is a book that turns upon a different question: why the author writes. This is my second attempt at a review of it, and I think my reasons for making the change are important. I would not want other readers to be led astray by Amazon's marketing as I was when I first read it, and expect a novel about moral degeneration in Germany during the interwar years, only to criticize the author for not succeeding. Alerted by another reader, I have since read a German-language interview in which the author reveals that her interest was not societal at all; instead, she was telling the story of a single character, inspired by a connection that was intensely personal. So now I am trying again. Why an author writes makes all the difference.
The book opens with a surely-unforgivable act: a mother leaves her young son at a railroad station promising to come back for him, but never does. The year is 1945. The place is Stettin, now in Poland, but then on the eastern border of a defeated Germany overrun by the Russians. The child witnesses his mother's forced surrender to the sex-starved victors, but Franck's truly unforgettable image is of one of those soldiers, naked except for his helmet, hidden behind the door, legs drawn up, head in his hands, sitting on the floor sobbing. The detail is striking precisely because it seems to contradict the brutality of the rest; the tragedy of war is not merely for the vanquished.
If the whole novel were as good as its prologue, it would be tremendous. There is a real moral question here: what can have happened for such a breakdown of values to occur? Looking back now over my original Amazon review, since transported here, I see that I perhaps gave more details than some readers would like; hence the spoiler warning.
If Franck was writing to gain some sympathy with her protagonist, she ultimately succeeds, but I am not convinced she can draw a connected line from beginning to end. It seems to me that the nearer she comes to the final horror, the more she must rely on external circumstance rather than internal choice, and the faster she must move. I also question whether it should be necessary to read an interview to understand the personal nature of the writing. The prologue is so searing that there is no doubt as to its immediacy. But there are long stretches in the middle where that sense of connection is lost. Perhaps some horrors are so intrinsically inconceivable that they defeat even such an imaginative writer?
March 14, 2023
اونقد این کتاب سانسور داشت که خیلی وقتا سخت میشد فهمید چه خبره.. واسه همین خوندنش چند ماهی طول کشید
ویراستاری هم خوب نبود
اما خب داستانش قشنگ بود، تلخ و خیلی تلخ
ویراستاری هم خوب نبود
اما خب داستانش قشنگ بود، تلخ و خیلی تلخ
August 4, 2014
I found this was a really slow book; after the 'prologue', which was actually a scene from the end of the story, it then took time to really get going. It largely tells the story of sisters Martha and Helene, especially the latter younger sister, as they are brought up in Germany during the period of the two World Wars. They virtually have to care for themselves after their father goes off to fight in WW1 and comes back seriously injured; their mother meanwhile goes gradually insane. Eventually leaving to start new lives in Berlin in the inter-war period, both sisters end up as nurses; but personal tragedy stalks both of them, particularly Helene - the second half of the book is largely her story. What annoyed me about the book was, firstly, the 20-odd lines of blurb in the front cover - this should have the bold warning 'SPOILER' at the beginning as it tells virtually the entire story of the book! and secondly, the large amount of philosophical discussion between various of the characters in the first half of the book, which I found particularly tedious. The book was rescued a bit by the second half but, to be honest, I was glad to finish it! 7/10.
July 25, 2011
Die Mittagsfrau ist eines jener Bücher, vor denen ich mich ganz lang gedrückt habe, mich störte der Hype um das Buch und vor allem um die Autorin.
Tatsächlich kann ich nicht genau beschreiben, was an dem Buch so gut funktioniert, aber ich konnte es immer kaum erwarten, weiterlesen zu können.
Wer es lesen will, sollte übrigens unbedingt NICHT den Klappentext lesen, da wird nämlich etwas ganz Wesentliches verraten.
Zum Inhalt schweige ich mich hier aus, da man ihn allüberall nachlesen kann, in Tausenden Kommentaren.
Die einen nicht abschrecken sollen!
Der einzige winzige Kritikpunkt, den ich an Buch und Handlung habe, sind die Gespräche über Literatur, die die Verbundenheit mancher Personen unterstreichen sollen. Ist eine hübsche Anlehnung an klassische Vorlagen, hier wirken diese Ausschweifungen oftmals etwas peinlich, finde ich.
Tatsächlich kann ich nicht genau beschreiben, was an dem Buch so gut funktioniert, aber ich konnte es immer kaum erwarten, weiterlesen zu können.
Wer es lesen will, sollte übrigens unbedingt NICHT den Klappentext lesen, da wird nämlich etwas ganz Wesentliches verraten.
Zum Inhalt schweige ich mich hier aus, da man ihn allüberall nachlesen kann, in Tausenden Kommentaren.
Die einen nicht abschrecken sollen!
Der einzige winzige Kritikpunkt, den ich an Buch und Handlung habe, sind die Gespräche über Literatur, die die Verbundenheit mancher Personen unterstreichen sollen. Ist eine hübsche Anlehnung an klassische Vorlagen, hier wirken diese Ausschweifungen oftmals etwas peinlich, finde ich.
July 26, 2018
I nearly didn't finish this book, and maybe two stars is too many. None of the characters is introspective, and all are self-absorbed, so it's hard to feel anything for them. And while there are references to people (Jews) being taken, the effect of that on Helene, the main character in the second half of the book, is never discussed. Except for Helene's work as a nurse, which brings her in contact with the wounded from the war, no one except Helene's husband seems to have any idea what's going on around them, either socially or politically (this is Germany between the wars) until near the end when Helene runs across a cattle car full of people while out hunting for mushrooms.
January 27, 2012
well i have finished it. thats the most positive i can be about it i am afraid. I found it slow and quite a cold read. There is such a sense of loss and detachment that runs through the whole book. All the characters portray a want / need that they cant nor wont allow others to fill. i just felt that although the timing of the story made it worse the characters just needed a huge kick to get them going and nothing ever did. all in all i am glad its over!
December 18, 2018
Very good book but it's so depressing that I don't think I could ever recommend it to someone.
April 1, 2011
Wilhelm interrupted her, tapping the boy on the back of the neck. Don't cry,Peter. And remember this, men are there to kill and women are there to heal their wounds. Peter tilted his head back and looked up to his father. Perhaps there was a smile? But no, his father's gaze was serious.
Chilling, disturbing, compelling, brutal, sensual, imaginative, unromantic, epic, saga - all of these words describe The Blindness in the Heart. This title was put on the longlist for Best Translated Book Award and with good reason: it is a novel in every sense of the word capturing the German Book Prize, listed as a finalist for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and selling over 800,000 copies in Germany alone. In breadth, depth and execution, it is a historical novel spanning two World Wars and three generations in twentieth century Germany.
Having stated this, it may imply that the novel would contain an extensive cast of characters, each making a mark on their generation. In actuality, it covers the life of Helene Wurisch with an intimate, unflinching eye that examines her experience of love from family to lovers in all its promise and cruelty. The historical setting of Nazi Germany may seem to lend itself to an obvious melodramatic tension, but Franck keeps its presence as menacing shadow while chronicling the history itself only as it effects Helene. As a novelist, Franck forgoes exploiting history but uses it simply as a one of the factors that effects the life of Helene and the decisions she makes. The impact of this choices creates a harrowing tone that reads more like a historical account of a woman who lived a difficult life without ever really understanding what love is than a romanticized saga of war.
The novel opens and closes from the close third person point-of-view of Helene's young son, Peter. It introduces to the reader the fact that Helene abandons her eight year old son at a train station. How could a mother do this, especially in a time of war? As horrible as this act is, Franck lays out an account of what leads Helene to make this decision. Switching to the third person point-of-view of Helene, we come to understand her - her choices and her history that lead her to the knowledge that she could never love Peter in the way that he needed to be loved. Here we are dropped into the story of eight year old Helene and her childhood filled with obstacles.
Her father, with whom she has the most normal relationship, leaves the family to go off to war only to return years later, crippled and lifeless. Her mother, Selma, is mentally unstable and sadistic, often berating Helene. Once Helene's father leaves for war, Selma retreats more and more into her mental illness by sequestering herself in her bedroom which is filled with bird wings, fabrics, and all kinds of 'hills and mounds of objects, collections of items for purposes both certain and uncertain.' The only love Helene has left is that of her old sister, Martha. Nine years Helene's senior, Martha is a beautiful nurse that Helene idolizes. She reads Byron to Helene and, after recognizing Helene's unusual intelligence, teaches everything she learns through her nurse's training. Helene and Martha share a bed and it is soon after we learn this that Franck introduces Martha as Helene's protector and perpetrator. Because Helene experiences no love except for that of Martha, she willingly complies when Martha wants more from her:
Can you see under my skin too, little angel? Do you know what's underneath the ribs here? The live lies here.
Sisterly knowledge. Remember that, you'll have to learn it all later. And this is where the gall bladder is, right beside it, yes, there. The word spleen was on Helene's lips, but she didn't want to say it, she just wanted to open her eyes, but Martha noticed and told her: Keep your eyes closed.
Helene felt Martha take her hand ad guide it up next to the rib, and finally still higher, up to her breast.
Although she kept her eyes tightly closed and couldn't see, Helene noticed her own feelings and how hot her face was all of the sudden. Martha was still guiding her hand, and Helene clearly felt the nipple and the firm, soft perfect curve of the breast. Then down the valley below, where she felt a bone.
A little rib.
Martha didn't answer, and now her hand was climbing the other hill. Helene peered through her lashes, but Martha's eyes weren't on her any more, there were wandering aimlessly, blissfully, under her own half-closed lids, and Helene saw Martha's lips opening slightly and moving.
Come here.
Martha's voice was husky; with her other hand she drew Helene's head towards her and pressed her own mouth on Helene's.
And so begins the complicated relationship between Helene and Martha. Loyal to each other throughout their lives, the love they share asks too much but when their is nothing else, they surrender to each other. Even though Martha abuses Helene, Helene never rebels or hates, she merely accepts how love is given to her. Once their father returns, he requires Martha's full-time care and Helene runs the family print shop business while their mother refuses to come down from her room to see her husband. He eventually dies and Martha and Helene move to Berlin to board with their wealthy, libertine Aunt Fanny. Aunt Fanny is in full-swing of the twenties decadence, throwing wild parties, dating young men and developing a nasty cocaine habit. Martha reunites with her lesbian married lover, Leontine, who is studying to become a doctor. Helene is now in her late teens and pursuing her nursing degree. She meets a young philosophy student, Carl, whom she falls in love with but is suddenly killed right before they are to be married.
Helene trudges on, working in a pharmacy and going to school. A few more years pass and Helene meets Wilhelm, a rich engineer work for the Third Reich who pursues her relentlessly. Learning that she is a Jew, he changes her name to Alice and procures papers for her to prove that she is Aryan. Once he learns that she is not a virgin, he disowns and humiliates her. Helene becomes pregnant with Peter. She continues to live with Wilhelm who spends more and more weeks away from home, leaving Helene to support herself through her work at the hospital. At first disowning the son, Wilhelm later comes home only to take him out for day excursions to bestow Peter with his fatherly wisdom. Of course, Helene knows that with the rose of the Nazis, things will only get worse for her. She leaves Peter in search of Martha who she fears has been taken to a concentration camp.
Incest, drug addiction, insanity, and the pervasive Nazism become the threads that knot Helene's life together barely allowing love to survive. Helene is a character raised to be used and despite her strong will to survive, her intelligence, history and circumstance do not allow her to flourish. This is the haunting reality of The Blindness of the Heart. Franck's style is austere, stoic and at times, clinical, so that Helene becomes a witness to her own life, unable to fully engage in what life has to offer because from the beginning all it offered her was sorrow and hardship. By the end, the reader empathizes with her choices even though it may be wrong. For a novelist to sway a reader's judgment of the character they present is an admirable and challenging task. Franck doesn't want us to feel sorry for Helene or to make excuses for her. She only wants us to understand her.
The only troublesome weakness in this novel are is the time shifts. It is basically a linear time structure. But in each chapter, the reader becomes so ensconced in the Helene of that time when they start to read the next chapter they are not sure if time has passed or not, only to discover she is three years older. This can disorient the reader a bit when trying to discern what events are happening with her at what age, but it is not so distracting that it detracts from the believability of Helene's character.
What fails this novel is the cover. How unfortunate a choice. This cover makes it resemble a romantic read, a book for women who like historical fiction. In my mind, marketing malfunction. This is a sinister read that doesn't shy away from taboo topics and as a matter of fact, addresses those topics in a way rarely done before and is a literary novel that deserves attention from all readers. Yet, the cover panders to the female reader and in doing so, does a disservice to the novel itself. Lesbianism, drugs, incest may not seem like new territory, but Franck does so without a hint of exploitation o sensationalism. This is a serious novel with complex themes and messages. The cover diminishes the substance that lies within.
As to the translation, the language is straightforward. Anthea Bell is a revered translator with impressive works to her credit and this will add to her accomplishments. But because Franck's style is direct, the translation might have been less challenging than other works contending for spots on the shortlist.
Ultimately, The Blindness of the Heart. is a gripping psychological novel that explores a woman's search for freedom from restraints of history and family. It imparts upon the reader a disturbing idea of the cost of that freedom and how truly precious it is.
September 27, 2025
Ein schönes, aber auch ein sehr trauriges Buch. Die Geschichte und das Schicksal der Protagonistin Hellen hat mich mitgenommen und sehr berührt. Auch der Schreibstil der Autorin hat mir gut gefallen und passte sich dem emotionalen Zustand der Protagonistin im Verlauf des Buches an. Manchmal hätte ich mir ein bisschen mehr Informationen des Erzählenden gewünscht um mir ein besseres Urteil fällen zu können.
September 30, 2025
Julia Franck’s The Blindness of the Heart (Die Mittagsfrau) is a novel of war, trauma, and the unbearable compromises of survival. Winner of the German Book Prize in 2007, it opens with a devastating scene: in 1945, a mother abandons her young son at a railway station and walks away.
The rest of the novel moves backward to unravel how such an act could come to pass. Helene, the protagonist, is born into a German family riven by madness, grief, and shifting politics. As she grows up between the wars, she is forced to navigate the collapse of Weimar, the rise of Nazism, and the brutal realities of war.
Franck’s prose is restrained, often understated, but it conveys the weight of history pressing down on individuals. Helene is not presented as a heroine but as a deeply human figure—flawed, sometimes complicit, always striving to endure.
The novel asks hard questions about survival: what do we sacrifice, whom do we betray, and what scars are passed on? The abandonment of her son, shocking at the start, comes to be understood not as a simple act of cruelty but as the culmination of despair, exhaustion, and an attempt, however misguided, at giving him a chance at life.
Franck avoids sentimentality; her narrative is unsparing. She reconstructs the everyday texture of life under fascism and war: ration lines, whispered fears, sudden disappearances.
The Blindness of the Heart is a novel about history’s crushing force on private life, but it is also about resilience and the silence of trauma.
It lingers long after reading, a bleak yet profoundly moving meditation on what it means to live through catastrophe.
The rest of the novel moves backward to unravel how such an act could come to pass. Helene, the protagonist, is born into a German family riven by madness, grief, and shifting politics. As she grows up between the wars, she is forced to navigate the collapse of Weimar, the rise of Nazism, and the brutal realities of war.
Franck’s prose is restrained, often understated, but it conveys the weight of history pressing down on individuals. Helene is not presented as a heroine but as a deeply human figure—flawed, sometimes complicit, always striving to endure.
The novel asks hard questions about survival: what do we sacrifice, whom do we betray, and what scars are passed on? The abandonment of her son, shocking at the start, comes to be understood not as a simple act of cruelty but as the culmination of despair, exhaustion, and an attempt, however misguided, at giving him a chance at life.
Franck avoids sentimentality; her narrative is unsparing. She reconstructs the everyday texture of life under fascism and war: ration lines, whispered fears, sudden disappearances.
The Blindness of the Heart is a novel about history’s crushing force on private life, but it is also about resilience and the silence of trauma.
It lingers long after reading, a bleak yet profoundly moving meditation on what it means to live through catastrophe.
November 21, 2021
Endlich einmal ein Roman von der Liste der Preisträger und Nominierten, bei dem ich mich überhaupt nicht wundere, dass er den Deutschen Buchpreis erhalten hat! 2007 gewann Julia Franck als dritte den Preis mit ihrem Roman Die Mittagsfrau.
Die Mittagsfrau erzählt die Geschichte von Helene Würsich in einem Zeitrahmen von Beginn des 20.
Jahrhunderts bis in die Nachkriegszeit des zweiten Weltkriegs.
Helene wächst mit ihrer Schwester Martha in einer dysfunktionalen Familie in Bautzen auf. Der Vater, der eigentlich eine Druckerei betreibt, wird in den ersten Weltkrieg eingezogen, während die psychisch erkrankte Mutter sich so gut wie gar nicht um ihre Kinder kümmert. Helene und Martha lassen sich als Krankenschwestern ausbilden und fliehen nach dem Tod des Vater zu einer Tante. Bei ihr erleben sie das Berlin der 20er Jahre. Helene verliebt sich, doch als ihr Verlobter stirbt, stürzt sie in eine tiefe Depression. Mit dem zunehmenden Erstarken des Nationalsozialismus beginnt ihre Herkunft - die Mutter ist Jüdin - zu einem Problem zu werden. Der Ingenieur Wilhelm verschafft ihr neue Papiere unter der Bedingung, dass sie ihn heiratet und mit ihm nach Stettin zieht. Als Wilhelm bemerkt, dass sie nicht jungfräulich in die Ehe gegangen ist, nimmt er immer mehr Abstand von ihr und interessiert sich auch nicht für den Sohn Peter. Er lässt die beiden schließlich unter dem Vorwand beruflicher Verpflichtungen allein, wo Helene viel arbeitet und zwar ihren Sohn gut versorgt, aber kaum Zeit mit ihm verbringt.
Erzählerisch eingeklammert wird diese Lebensgeschichte Helenes von einem Prolog und einem Epilog aus Peters Sicht: Zu Beginn erlebt der Leser mit, wie seine Mutter ihn als Siebenjährigen auf dem Bahnhof in Stettin zurücklässt. Eine Begründung ist nicht in Sicht, der Leser ist genauso fassungslos wie Peter selbst. Im Epilog
Die Autorin bedient sich einer eher sachlichen Erzählweise, die jeweils stark an die Sicht der Personen, Peter und Helene, geknüpft ist. Die zentrale Frage, die der Prolog aufwirft, nämlich wie eine Mutter ihr Kind verlassen kann, wird nicht abschließend beantwortet, sondern es ergeben sich vielmehr zahlreiche Erklärungsmuster und Deutungsansätze aus der Geschichte Helenes. Und es sind viele große Themen, die die Autorin hier anschneidet: Selbstbestimmung der Frau, Muttersein, Funktion von Familie, psychische Krankheiten, Nationalsozialismus, Gewalt in der Ehe,...
Der deutsche Wikipedia-Artikel gibt einen beeindruckenden Überblick darüber und stellt einige der Deutungsansätze vor.
Interessant finde ich, dass der Roman in den Übersetzungen und anderen Ländern anders rezipiert wird, häufig steht dort der Themenbereich des Nationalsozialismus stärker im Vordergrund, den ich beispielsweise als weniger dominant wahrgenommen habe, auch wenn er stellenweisen natürlich plotrelevant ist. Ich bleibe eher mit der Frage zurück, ob problematische Familienverhältnisse zum Beispiel mit psychischen Erkrankungen der Eltern, zwangsläufig dazu führen, dass auch die Kinder als spätere Eltern Schwierigkeiten mit Bindungen zu Partner und Kindern haben. Andererseits hinkt diese Deutung massiv, denn die Bedingungen, unter denen Helene durchs Leben gehen musste, waren denkbar schlecht und benachteiligten ihre Entwicklung auf allen Ebenen. Viele interessante Fragen, die bleiben, nach der Lektüre dieses intelligent konstruierten und gut erzählten Romans.
Die Mittagsfrau erzählt die Geschichte von Helene Würsich in einem Zeitrahmen von Beginn des 20.
Jahrhunderts bis in die Nachkriegszeit des zweiten Weltkriegs.
Helene wächst mit ihrer Schwester Martha in einer dysfunktionalen Familie in Bautzen auf. Der Vater, der eigentlich eine Druckerei betreibt, wird in den ersten Weltkrieg eingezogen, während die psychisch erkrankte Mutter sich so gut wie gar nicht um ihre Kinder kümmert. Helene und Martha lassen sich als Krankenschwestern ausbilden und fliehen nach dem Tod des Vater zu einer Tante. Bei ihr erleben sie das Berlin der 20er Jahre. Helene verliebt sich, doch als ihr Verlobter stirbt, stürzt sie in eine tiefe Depression. Mit dem zunehmenden Erstarken des Nationalsozialismus beginnt ihre Herkunft - die Mutter ist Jüdin - zu einem Problem zu werden. Der Ingenieur Wilhelm verschafft ihr neue Papiere unter der Bedingung, dass sie ihn heiratet und mit ihm nach Stettin zieht. Als Wilhelm bemerkt, dass sie nicht jungfräulich in die Ehe gegangen ist, nimmt er immer mehr Abstand von ihr und interessiert sich auch nicht für den Sohn Peter. Er lässt die beiden schließlich unter dem Vorwand beruflicher Verpflichtungen allein, wo Helene viel arbeitet und zwar ihren Sohn gut versorgt, aber kaum Zeit mit ihm verbringt.
Erzählerisch eingeklammert wird diese Lebensgeschichte Helenes von einem Prolog und einem Epilog aus Peters Sicht: Zu Beginn erlebt der Leser mit, wie seine Mutter ihn als Siebenjährigen auf dem Bahnhof in Stettin zurücklässt. Eine Begründung ist nicht in Sicht, der Leser ist genauso fassungslos wie Peter selbst. Im Epilog
Die Autorin bedient sich einer eher sachlichen Erzählweise, die jeweils stark an die Sicht der Personen, Peter und Helene, geknüpft ist. Die zentrale Frage, die der Prolog aufwirft, nämlich wie eine Mutter ihr Kind verlassen kann, wird nicht abschließend beantwortet, sondern es ergeben sich vielmehr zahlreiche Erklärungsmuster und Deutungsansätze aus der Geschichte Helenes. Und es sind viele große Themen, die die Autorin hier anschneidet: Selbstbestimmung der Frau, Muttersein, Funktion von Familie, psychische Krankheiten, Nationalsozialismus, Gewalt in der Ehe,...
Der deutsche Wikipedia-Artikel gibt einen beeindruckenden Überblick darüber und stellt einige der Deutungsansätze vor.
Interessant finde ich, dass der Roman in den Übersetzungen und anderen Ländern anders rezipiert wird, häufig steht dort der Themenbereich des Nationalsozialismus stärker im Vordergrund, den ich beispielsweise als weniger dominant wahrgenommen habe, auch wenn er stellenweisen natürlich plotrelevant ist. Ich bleibe eher mit der Frage zurück, ob problematische Familienverhältnisse zum Beispiel mit psychischen Erkrankungen der Eltern, zwangsläufig dazu führen, dass auch die Kinder als spätere Eltern Schwierigkeiten mit Bindungen zu Partner und Kindern haben. Andererseits hinkt diese Deutung massiv, denn die Bedingungen, unter denen Helene durchs Leben gehen musste, waren denkbar schlecht und benachteiligten ihre Entwicklung auf allen Ebenen. Viele interessante Fragen, die bleiben, nach der Lektüre dieses intelligent konstruierten und gut erzählten Romans.
December 30, 2025
Die Mittagsfrau von Julia Franck ist wunderschön geschrieben, aber oft kaum auszuhalten vor Traurigkeit. Die Geschichte hat mich sehr berührt und stellenweise richtig zerrüttet. Besonders spannend fand ich, die offenen zwanziger Jahre mitzuerleben und dann den Übergang in die Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Die schöne Liebesgeschichte am Anfang steht in starkem Gegensatz zu der späteren, erschreckend hässlichen Ehe. Ein Buch, das weh tut, aber lange im Kopf bleibt.
October 23, 2020
Recensie volgt op mn blog
December 27, 2018
Julia Franck schafft es mit den ersten Seiten ihres Romans, eine Welt zu erschaffen, die zwar als historisches Ereignis bekannt, in dieser erzählerischen Fassung jedoch unangetastet und mitreißerisch neue Perspektiven eröffnet.
Die lesende Person Begleitet die Romanfiguren durch eine Zeit, die heute noch so nah und doch fern erscheint.
Und doch zieht die clevere Erzählstruktur einen in ihren Bann.
Denn sind es nicht die Geheimnisse, die unausgesprochenen Empfindungen, die unausgelebten Gelüste und tabuisierten Gedanken der Protagonisten, die den mitwissenden Leser, die mitwissende Leserin in Komplizenschaft ziehen?
So schafft es Frank, Situationen anzusprechen über deren Existenz zwar Bekanntheit herrscht, diese jedoch allgemein verschwiegen wird. Frank dringt tief in die Psyche einer Frau Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts ein. Und kehrt nach Außen, für den Leser sichtbar gemacht, was nach wie vor und noch viel stärker heute Relevanz besitzt.
Durch eine aufmerksame und äußerst persönliche Geschichte, führt Frank durch den ersten Weltkrieg, die Zwanziger Jahre, Inflationen, die Geburt der Psychoanalyse, den zweiten Weltkrieg und andere große Marker, die unsere heutige Gesellschaft prägen. Und doch passiert es nicht selten, dass diese äußeren Einflüsse leicht zu überlesen sind. Die Geschichte der Protagonistin Helene steht im Vordergrund und alles andere fließt unterschwellig, permanent und unausweichlich mit.
Persönliche Schicksale wurden auch damals nicht vom Krieg gesponnen.
Sie waren eng mit ihm verwoben, trennten sich, gebaren neue Ebenen und blieben zuletzt persönliche Schicksale, die als solche gelesen werden müssen. Ein Tod, war, ist und bleibt ein Tod und die Reaktion darauf individuell und eigen.
Doch egal wie schwer die beschriebenen Schicksale - selbst in dieser Geschichte oder vielleicht gerade in dieser Geschichte - wird wieder einmal bewusst wie kompromisslos grausam jede Form von -Ismus ist. Die absolute Ungerechtigkeit, das eigene Leben nicht so führen zu können, wie es jede Faser des Körpers und des Geistes verlangen. Das Buch ist eine Liebeserklärung an die Freiheit über den schmerzhaftesten weg.
In der Exposition des Schmerzes findet sich immer wieder Ekel. Ein Ekel, der in seiner schmarotzerhaften Natur in einen dringt und es erst möglich macht, den Schmerz auf sich anzuwenden.
Ein Ekel, der sich bereits unter die Haut geschlichen hat, bevor man ihn vor dem inneren Auge greifbar machen kann. Er legt sich auf alle Sinnes-Rezeptoren, hockt schwer und sämig im Rachen, presst sich nieder auf das Herz und klammert sich kompromisslos um die Reflektion des selbst. Der von Frank geschaffene Ekel ist so Widerlich, weil er bekannt, ehrlich und nahe ist. Die eigentliche Überraschung ist nur, ihn auf dem Papier zu lesen
Die lesende Person Begleitet die Romanfiguren durch eine Zeit, die heute noch so nah und doch fern erscheint.
Und doch zieht die clevere Erzählstruktur einen in ihren Bann.
Denn sind es nicht die Geheimnisse, die unausgesprochenen Empfindungen, die unausgelebten Gelüste und tabuisierten Gedanken der Protagonisten, die den mitwissenden Leser, die mitwissende Leserin in Komplizenschaft ziehen?
So schafft es Frank, Situationen anzusprechen über deren Existenz zwar Bekanntheit herrscht, diese jedoch allgemein verschwiegen wird. Frank dringt tief in die Psyche einer Frau Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts ein. Und kehrt nach Außen, für den Leser sichtbar gemacht, was nach wie vor und noch viel stärker heute Relevanz besitzt.
Durch eine aufmerksame und äußerst persönliche Geschichte, führt Frank durch den ersten Weltkrieg, die Zwanziger Jahre, Inflationen, die Geburt der Psychoanalyse, den zweiten Weltkrieg und andere große Marker, die unsere heutige Gesellschaft prägen. Und doch passiert es nicht selten, dass diese äußeren Einflüsse leicht zu überlesen sind. Die Geschichte der Protagonistin Helene steht im Vordergrund und alles andere fließt unterschwellig, permanent und unausweichlich mit.
Persönliche Schicksale wurden auch damals nicht vom Krieg gesponnen.
Sie waren eng mit ihm verwoben, trennten sich, gebaren neue Ebenen und blieben zuletzt persönliche Schicksale, die als solche gelesen werden müssen. Ein Tod, war, ist und bleibt ein Tod und die Reaktion darauf individuell und eigen.
Doch egal wie schwer die beschriebenen Schicksale - selbst in dieser Geschichte oder vielleicht gerade in dieser Geschichte - wird wieder einmal bewusst wie kompromisslos grausam jede Form von -Ismus ist. Die absolute Ungerechtigkeit, das eigene Leben nicht so führen zu können, wie es jede Faser des Körpers und des Geistes verlangen. Das Buch ist eine Liebeserklärung an die Freiheit über den schmerzhaftesten weg.
In der Exposition des Schmerzes findet sich immer wieder Ekel. Ein Ekel, der in seiner schmarotzerhaften Natur in einen dringt und es erst möglich macht, den Schmerz auf sich anzuwenden.
Ein Ekel, der sich bereits unter die Haut geschlichen hat, bevor man ihn vor dem inneren Auge greifbar machen kann. Er legt sich auf alle Sinnes-Rezeptoren, hockt schwer und sämig im Rachen, presst sich nieder auf das Herz und klammert sich kompromisslos um die Reflektion des selbst. Der von Frank geschaffene Ekel ist so Widerlich, weil er bekannt, ehrlich und nahe ist. Die eigentliche Überraschung ist nur, ihn auf dem Papier zu lesen
May 11, 2017
To say that I've read this is in fact a lie. I got through about 120 pages and stopped. To start with it's not really a 'me' book, but that wasn't going to stop me from trying, but I just couldn't get on board with it. The only character I sort of liked was Ernst, and then he went and died so then you were left with sisters with a distinctly odd relationship (I don't have a sister, but I couldn't really believe that) and a mother I desperately wanted to slap some rational into.
And the lack of speech marks drove me bonkers, even though everyone I talked to said I'd get used to it. I don't know if that's the way German authors write, or a choice of the translator, but it offended every grammatical bone in my body.
Our book group discussion did make it sound more interesting as the book progressed, but I don't think I'll be trying to battle my way through it. From what I read of it, I don't really think it merited the reviews of being 'a masterpeice' and 'exquisite'. But I know that I'm in a minority.
And the lack of speech marks drove me bonkers, even though everyone I talked to said I'd get used to it. I don't know if that's the way German authors write, or a choice of the translator, but it offended every grammatical bone in my body.
Our book group discussion did make it sound more interesting as the book progressed, but I don't think I'll be trying to battle my way through it. From what I read of it, I don't really think it merited the reviews of being 'a masterpeice' and 'exquisite'. But I know that I'm in a minority.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2010
Ja natürlich ist das ein grausames Buch. Es schildert den Lebensweg einer Frau, die so gebrochen ist, dass sie ihren kleinen Sohn aussetzt (auch wenn sie sich einredet dabei dem Sohn Gutes zu tun, doch eigentlich nur, um sich selbst zu bestrafen?). Was daran langatmig sein soll? Es ist unheimlich detailliert geschrieben, präzise, so klinisch, dass es einen fast schon ekelt. Da ist kein Moment in dieser erdachten Biographie, den man auslassen sollte. Am Ende ging es mir beinahe zu hastig. Daher 4 Sterne.
October 17, 2015
Am terminat cartea cu un oftat plin de tristete. Cata suferinta este pe lumea asta! Personajul principal, Helene care traieste o viata in care experientele nefericite se precipita si fac din ea o persoana rece si dura. Isi abandoneaza baietelul intr-o gara fara sa ii spuna ca o face pentru "bunastarea" lui, doar ea singura crede asta. Sper ca Peter sa isi fi gasit linistea sufleteasca.
May 5, 2018
Except for the prologue, I absolutely hated this book. A colossal waste of time. Why all the rave reviews? I'm mystified.
October 30, 2023
Lúc gập quyển sách lại, tôi cứ băn khoăn mãi. Người ta quảng cáo quyển sách này là tác phẩm thể hiện số phận người phụ nữ trong trải qua hai cuộc chiến tranh thế giới, thể hiện sự bất công trong xã hội mà phụ nữ phải chấp nhận. Nhưng điều này không thực sự rõ ràng. Với tôi, mục đích của tác giả chính là lý giải tại sao Helene lại có hành động "lệch chuẩn" so với giá trị đạo đức phổ biến.
Những chấn thương tâm lý từ tuổi thơ, sự thất vọng khi đánh mất tình yêu đầu, sự sợ hãi trong cuộc hôn nhân giữa thời Đức Quốc xã, sự bàng quan không thể tránh khỏi trong công việc, đã hủy hoại Helene. Đến cuối cùng, khi cô nhận ra mình đã có những dấu hiệu như mẹ của mình, cô đã quyết định để đứa con đi xa, còn mình quay về với người mà mình yêu thương nhất để có động lực sống. Nói cách khác, Helene là một người phụ nữ can trường, lựa chọn cô đưa ra cũng chính là để giúp đứa con không trải qua cùng một ký ức với mình, cắt đứt sự ám ảnh ở đời của cô mà thôi.
Những chấn thương tâm lý từ tuổi thơ, sự thất vọng khi đánh mất tình yêu đầu, sự sợ hãi trong cuộc hôn nhân giữa thời Đức Quốc xã, sự bàng quan không thể tránh khỏi trong công việc, đã hủy hoại Helene. Đến cuối cùng, khi cô nhận ra mình đã có những dấu hiệu như mẹ của mình, cô đã quyết định để đứa con đi xa, còn mình quay về với người mà mình yêu thương nhất để có động lực sống. Nói cách khác, Helene là một người phụ nữ can trường, lựa chọn cô đưa ra cũng chính là để giúp đứa con không trải qua cùng một ký ức với mình, cắt đứt sự ám ảnh ở đời của cô mà thôi.
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