Goldfish Memory

by Monique Schwitter, Eluned Gramich (Translation)

What is it that makes one person a complete stranger, and another a friend, an accomplice, or even a lover? This is the question explored by these brilliant and quirky short stories. A traveler shuts himself up in his hotel room with no one but room service to talk to, a teenager stalks her long-lost father, a journalist interviews a great poet with a dark past, a woman pursues a doomed liaison with an anonymous man she meets once a month at the casino, a bar lady locked in with the regulars at night are just some tales in this collection that explore the mysterious and random side of human relationships. From the winner of the prestigious Robert Walser First Novel Award and Switzerland’s Schiller Foundation Writers Prize, Goldfish Memory is a form-breaking work not to be missed.

Genres: Short Stories

166 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2012

Reviews

[Warwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fairly underwhelming collection from Swiss writer Monique Schwitter, her only one in English translation as far as I can tell. The stories all share the same general themes – family secrets, strangers with hidden motives – and the same tone, of reflective melancholy. To me, most of it seemed like the usual middlebrow short-story fare, which starts with a depressed narrator and ends with some kind of revelation that someone is going to die, or perhaps is already dead, or at any rate has lost their mind. Eluned Gramich's translation is serviceable, though there are a few telling slips (writing ‘back mirror’ – a literal translation of the German – instead of ‘rear view mirror’, for example). I found more to enjoy in the later stories, but I'm afraid by then I'd rather fallen out with the book's atmosphere.

[Gretel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this collection of quirky and unsentimental short stories, Schwitter explores strained and unusual human relationships. Schwitter's style is short and snappy and very easy to read. Schwitter's characters are interesting, although kept mostly at arm's length.

Favourites:

His Daughter Mascha: Probably my favourite of all the stories. A father receives a letter in the post from the cemetery stating that the plot of his daughter's grave has expired, unlocking supressed memories of poor stillborn Mascha and her troubled mother.

Our Story: A woman's manipulative, selfish, yet terribly fun best friend is dying, and the narrator is writing her life story.

Haiku and Horror: A tale of correspondence. A journalist keeps contacting an author of haikus, who is reluctant to speak to her. Eventually she convinces him to speak and they start an unorthodox relationship.

The Pit: An actress's takes a journey to her old home and examines the reasons why she abandoned her partner and their child. She is very egocentric and has a habit of making everything about her. She eventually asks for forgiveness, but is it too late?

A Tendency Towards Nothing: The story of a man and a woman's strange ritual of going to a casino monthly together, and how things are very different when the woman decides to go alone.

Andante con moto: A story about the events leading up to a child's baptism. This one is a great study of familial relationships.

Overall some interesting tales here, but some were too fleeting and failed to leave any impression on me.