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Къщата с лебеда
Used book in good condition, due to its age it could contain normal signs of use
- GenresNovels
328 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Martin Walser
219 books76 followersMartin Walser was a German writer. He became famous for describing the conflicts his anti-heroes have in his novels and stories. In 1998 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt. He was also the father of authors Johanna Walser, Theresia Walser and Alissa Walser.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 13, 2017
Can one be incompetent at life? Our hero, or more properly, anti-hero, proves the answer to be yes.
Here’s a middle-aged man who is a marginal provider for his family as a real estate agent. He is increasingly reliant on his wife to help him close deals. He’s a more-or-less incompetent husband and father to four children, all girls. When he arrives home from work he seems to wonder what his wife and kids are doing there.
He impulsively buys an expensive oriental rug which he can’t afford. He’s a social disaster at cocktail parties, almost as if he goes out of his way to say the wrong things. He goes through life in an imaginary rivalry with two top-flight real estate agents who get all the good listings and close the best deals. I say “imaginary” because while he acts and reacts to them, and practices one-upsmanship in his head, his supposed rivals hardly know he exists.
The novel’s immediate theme is that he is strategizing to get the listing for the Swan Villa, a pricey mansion right in his neighborhood. Getting that listing would bring a big commission that would help solve his money woes and earn him prestige in the eyes of his “rivals.”
Some passages I liked:
“He believed that a person’s age as determined by the year of his birth almost never coincided with his real age.”
“Time passes! Bull! It accumulates.”
“It is the illusion that one does not think of one as one thinks of them that keeps human relations alive.”
On his youngest daughter tending toward hypochondria: “This information showed him that [the doctor] had succeeded in placing himself between Regina and her illness.”
The book is a primer in the intricacies of the German language. Not only do you have High Middle and Low German, but you have regional and class dialects. What dialect you use depends on the context and on who you are talking with. So our hero, for example, can figure out who his daughters are talking to on the phone by the type of language they use. He gets upset when they too quickly convert over to match the language of the caller. We get a lot of local color of small town Germany around the 1980’s and his beautiful house along the lake where he swims every day for exercise.
(revised 6/12/17)
Photo from dreamstime.com
Here’s a middle-aged man who is a marginal provider for his family as a real estate agent. He is increasingly reliant on his wife to help him close deals. He’s a more-or-less incompetent husband and father to four children, all girls. When he arrives home from work he seems to wonder what his wife and kids are doing there.
He impulsively buys an expensive oriental rug which he can’t afford. He’s a social disaster at cocktail parties, almost as if he goes out of his way to say the wrong things. He goes through life in an imaginary rivalry with two top-flight real estate agents who get all the good listings and close the best deals. I say “imaginary” because while he acts and reacts to them, and practices one-upsmanship in his head, his supposed rivals hardly know he exists.
The novel’s immediate theme is that he is strategizing to get the listing for the Swan Villa, a pricey mansion right in his neighborhood. Getting that listing would bring a big commission that would help solve his money woes and earn him prestige in the eyes of his “rivals.”
Some passages I liked:
“He believed that a person’s age as determined by the year of his birth almost never coincided with his real age.”
“Time passes! Bull! It accumulates.”
“It is the illusion that one does not think of one as one thinks of them that keeps human relations alive.”
On his youngest daughter tending toward hypochondria: “This information showed him that [the doctor] had succeeded in placing himself between Regina and her illness.”
The book is a primer in the intricacies of the German language. Not only do you have High Middle and Low German, but you have regional and class dialects. What dialect you use depends on the context and on who you are talking with. So our hero, for example, can figure out who his daughters are talking to on the phone by the type of language they use. He gets upset when they too quickly convert over to match the language of the caller. We get a lot of local color of small town Germany around the 1980’s and his beautiful house along the lake where he swims every day for exercise.
(revised 6/12/17)
Photo from dreamstime.com
Displaying 1 of 1 review