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La disparition d'Heinrich Schlögel
Martha Baillie’s hypnotic novel follows Heinrich Schlögel from Germany to Canada, where he sets out on a two-week hike into the isolated interior of Baffin Island. His journey quickly becomes surreal; he experiences strange encounters and inexplicable visions as shards of Arctic history emerge from the shifting landscape. When he returns from his hike, he discovers that, though he has not aged, thirty years have passed.
Narrated by an unnamed archivist who is attempting to piece together the truth of Heinrich’s life, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel dances between reality and dream, asking us to consider not only our role in imagining the future into existence but also the consequences of our past choices.
Narrated by an unnamed archivist who is attempting to piece together the truth of Heinrich’s life, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel dances between reality and dream, asking us to consider not only our role in imagining the future into existence but also the consequences of our past choices.
287 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 2014
9 people are currently reading
746 people want to read
About the author
Martha Baillie
16 books52 followersMartha Baillie was born in Toronto, in 1960, and educated in a French-English bilingual school. At seventeen she left for Scotland where she studied history and modern languages (French and Russian) at the University of Edinburgh.
She completed her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Toronto. While at university, Baillie became involved in theatre.
She continued to act after graduation, taking scene study workshops and classes in voice and movement, while supporting herself by waitressing and teaching private French classes.
In 1981, she took an extended trip through parts of Asia including Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Burma, Nepal and India. This experience inspired her to switch her focus from acting to writing. Upon her return to Canada, she acquired an Ontario teaching certificate and briefly taught ESL to adults and French immersion to grade five students.
Today, she works part-time for the Toronto Public Library. She has done so for nearly twenty years, performing as a storyteller in schools, and day cares, organizing poetry readings, and community film screenings.
Canoeing and hiking are two of her principal passions, along with visual art, the theatre and opera.
Baillie’s first novel, My Sister Esther, was published in 1995, followed by Madame Balashovskaya’s Apartment in 1999. The later was also published in both Hungary and Germany. In 2006 her third novel, The Shape I Gave You came out with Knopf Canada, and was a national bestseller.
In The Incident Report (2009), Baillie uses the format of 144 short reports to recount incidents from her own experiences as a librarian.[3] As a work of fiction the novel contains conventional elements such as "a love story and a mystery"; as a report, it presents a subtext depicting "how Toronto libraries have become a refuge for the city's marginalized.
Martha has had poems published in journals including Descant, Prairie Fire and The Antigonish Review, and her non-fiction piece, The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach was published by Brick magazine (Summer 2007). Baillie has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. She lives in Toronto with her daughter and husband.
She completed her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Toronto. While at university, Baillie became involved in theatre.
She continued to act after graduation, taking scene study workshops and classes in voice and movement, while supporting herself by waitressing and teaching private French classes.
In 1981, she took an extended trip through parts of Asia including Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Burma, Nepal and India. This experience inspired her to switch her focus from acting to writing. Upon her return to Canada, she acquired an Ontario teaching certificate and briefly taught ESL to adults and French immersion to grade five students.
Today, she works part-time for the Toronto Public Library. She has done so for nearly twenty years, performing as a storyteller in schools, and day cares, organizing poetry readings, and community film screenings.
Canoeing and hiking are two of her principal passions, along with visual art, the theatre and opera.
Baillie’s first novel, My Sister Esther, was published in 1995, followed by Madame Balashovskaya’s Apartment in 1999. The later was also published in both Hungary and Germany. In 2006 her third novel, The Shape I Gave You came out with Knopf Canada, and was a national bestseller.
In The Incident Report (2009), Baillie uses the format of 144 short reports to recount incidents from her own experiences as a librarian.[3] As a work of fiction the novel contains conventional elements such as "a love story and a mystery"; as a report, it presents a subtext depicting "how Toronto libraries have become a refuge for the city's marginalized.
Martha has had poems published in journals including Descant, Prairie Fire and The Antigonish Review, and her non-fiction piece, The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach was published by Brick magazine (Summer 2007). Baillie has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. She lives in Toronto with her daughter and husband.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
September 11, 2014
Many people believe that as Martha Baillie's publisher I cannot possibly give an objective account of her work, being too invested in its sales outcome. I disagree. Recently on Facebook, friends have been listing their top ten books, and each time I see one of these lists I want to make my own present-day list, which would include Martha's new novel, **The Search for Heinrich Schlögel.** The work is so masterfully created, so utterly original and so perfectly fitting to the spirit of our time. I have read it at least eight times, and each time I am thrust into the deepest kind of reading pleasure, by which I mean: thinking, sailing, wondering, worrying: the promises of literary fiction delivered again and again and again. I have read this book closely, carefully, openly. As American author Howard Norman has already said, I too must say: Martha's novel is a masterpiece.
October 12, 2014
It's hard to find a way to articulate what I liked so much about this novel, and why it was so powerful, beyond saying it just sounds at a pitch that resonates with me. It's a novel that provokes questions about loneliness and isolation, and about the desire to leave home or explore or pursue or dreams whatever they may be, and how those single-minded pursuits — even when successful — might untether us forever from who we were and the world we belonged to. Putting it that sounds very metaphysical and vague, but what makes this novel so good is that it isn't vague, it's specific without getting trapped in a sense of being allegory and it's literal without being bland "realism." Which again doesn't really say much, I guess, so just read the book, please.
October 6, 2014
Talk about serendipity. I ran across this book when it was given away as an ARC at BEA this year. And although you are not supposed to judge a book for its cover, it was the cover that prompted me to put the book on top of my to-read pile of ARCs.
It has been one of the most pleasurable readings in a long time. Is certainly the first book where I was able to admire the beauty of the English language.
Baillie has crafted sentences, paragraphs and chapters where the reader is unable to detach him/herself of the characters, not even their surroundings.
It was not the story, but the *way it was told*, that I enjoyed the most. Several examples come to mind, but I would like to cite this one:
From this, you can easily feel the anguish of Heinrich over such a trivial issue as missing trees in a hike.
As always with books that I enjoyed reading, the ending fails to keep up with the rest of the book. It even contradicts what was stated at the beginning of the book.
However, these qualms do not lessen my appreciation of this book. It was wonderfully written and it left me with a sensation of loss now that it is over.
It has been one of the most pleasurable readings in a long time. Is certainly the first book where I was able to admire the beauty of the English language.
Baillie has crafted sentences, paragraphs and chapters where the reader is unable to detach him/herself of the characters, not even their surroundings.
It was not the story, but the *way it was told*, that I enjoyed the most. Several examples come to mind, but I would like to cite this one:
The complete absence of trees in no way bothered him. He felt disloyal, however, for not missing the presence of trees. Surely it was ungrateful of him to forget about them so easily? He tried to remember all that trees have given him - shelter from the wet, the pleasurable sound of leaves rustling, the relief of shade, the beauty of dappled light. His efforts met with resistance. If he conjured a general idea of a tree, it felt unconvincing. If he started to recall a particular tree, one he knew well, its presence became too real and intruded.
From this, you can easily feel the anguish of Heinrich over such a trivial issue as missing trees in a hike.
As always with books that I enjoyed reading, the ending fails to keep up with the rest of the book. It even contradicts what was stated at the beginning of the book.
However, these qualms do not lessen my appreciation of this book. It was wonderfully written and it left me with a sensation of loss now that it is over.
November 5, 2014
be sure and see the audio/visual archive/portrayal of heinrich schloger
http://schlogel.ca/
it is a stunning effort and worth it in itself to read and view and listen
book is about a young german man who strives toward his dream of 'exploring' the arctic with literary and literally strange results.
for readers who have it all.
http://schlogel.ca/
it is a stunning effort and worth it in itself to read and view and listen
book is about a young german man who strives toward his dream of 'exploring' the arctic with literary and literally strange results.
for readers who have it all.
September 17, 2014
Freaking brilliant. A slow start is flushed from memory by skillful writing and a sense of normalcy in stark contrast to the tale told. Too much to say, mustn't give any away. Read it.
October 25, 2014
Sustained meaning in an exquisitely realized and utterly original novel. I say this as a reader, not Martha's publisher, though I'm that, too.
May 31, 2021
This is almost like reading two separate and quite different books.
In the first half, a young man, the titular Schlögel, a young man from a provincial town in Germany flies to Canada in 1980 to hike in the Arctic. From boyhood he has been fascinated by the Canadian Arctic, deeply influenced by the explorer Samuel Hearne, and the German 19th century naturalist, Brehms. The first half concerns Heinrich’s upbringing, his influences and his endeavours to get to the Arctic, and is quite compelling.
The 12 day solitary trek itself occupies only a couple of chapters, but he experiences visions from the past; his hero Samuel Hearne, his own parents, and coincidentally relevant after the tragic news from Kamloops this week, the plight of Inuit children in residential schools.
I had forgotten the summary, so the twist when it occurs, was to my surprise. The plot, which wasn’t a strong part of the book, takes on a completely new dimension when Heinrich reaches Frobisher Bay, only to find out that it has been renamed Iqaluit, as it is now 2010.
It’s a slow, almost plotless novel, of Arctic exploration that reads like non-fiction with footnotes and is likely to interest only those with a Polar passion, that changes abruptly, and throws the reader completely off balance; it is now a tale about searching, and about the elusive traces we all leave behind.
Baillie does several things very well. In a more conventional book, the author might present historical wrongs as problems to be solved, but here she simply points to them, as inescapable truths for us to meditate upon. Heinrich’s romantic notions of the Arctic that he has built over his formative years are shattered, and he is taken aback, and bewildered - time has changed and his own place is uncertain. Countries have previous atrocities that they must consider and not forget, perhaps hence the choice of country for the young visitor.
In the first half, a young man, the titular Schlögel, a young man from a provincial town in Germany flies to Canada in 1980 to hike in the Arctic. From boyhood he has been fascinated by the Canadian Arctic, deeply influenced by the explorer Samuel Hearne, and the German 19th century naturalist, Brehms. The first half concerns Heinrich’s upbringing, his influences and his endeavours to get to the Arctic, and is quite compelling.
The 12 day solitary trek itself occupies only a couple of chapters, but he experiences visions from the past; his hero Samuel Hearne, his own parents, and coincidentally relevant after the tragic news from Kamloops this week, the plight of Inuit children in residential schools.
I had forgotten the summary, so the twist when it occurs, was to my surprise. The plot, which wasn’t a strong part of the book, takes on a completely new dimension when Heinrich reaches Frobisher Bay, only to find out that it has been renamed Iqaluit, as it is now 2010.
It’s a slow, almost plotless novel, of Arctic exploration that reads like non-fiction with footnotes and is likely to interest only those with a Polar passion, that changes abruptly, and throws the reader completely off balance; it is now a tale about searching, and about the elusive traces we all leave behind.
Baillie does several things very well. In a more conventional book, the author might present historical wrongs as problems to be solved, but here she simply points to them, as inescapable truths for us to meditate upon. Heinrich’s romantic notions of the Arctic that he has built over his formative years are shattered, and he is taken aback, and bewildered - time has changed and his own place is uncertain. Countries have previous atrocities that they must consider and not forget, perhaps hence the choice of country for the young visitor.
March 7, 2015
An experimental bit of surrealism, an unreliable narrator, a scatter of post-modernist technique (puzzles and scraps of information and footnotes, for example), some magical realism... stirred into a pot of mythology and time travel. The result? A confused reader -- one open to, indeed hoping for, clarity.
Anyone?
From Jade Colbert at the Globe & Mail: "At the heart of Martha Baillie's fragmentary, highly original new novel is an inexplicable event. In 1980, at age 20, Heinrich Schlögel escapes his West German birthplace to hike Baffin Island's interior. The trip lasts two weeks, but when he returns the year is 2010 and he has not aged a day. His biography, the one we read, comes to us via an amateur archivist (also German, transplanted in Toronto) who has compiled "the Schlögel archive": letters, photographs, books read, and other bits of ephemera related to the young man. How much of the story is the archivist's invention? The use of an unreliable narrator has a point here: Baillie is turning the tables on the European, who has taken the place usually held by the "native" as specimen of study. The result is a philosophic, absorbing read on photography, the North, colonialism, ethnography, and the nature of time."
From the back of the book:
"The story of a young man who escapes the claustrophobia of small-town Germany by travelling to Canada, where he sets out on a long solo hike into the interior of Baffin Island. Soon time begins to play tricks on him. Yanked from the twentieth century and deposited in the twenty-first, Heinrich lands in a disorienting, digital Present where a computer-nimble Pangnirtung teenager befriends him. She lives with her grandmother who rents Heinrich a room. "Capacious, capricious, mischievous, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel moves like a quantum experiment, defying boundaries of time, place, chronology. Fluid as light itself, animated by startling imagery, vivid and peculiar characters, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel is a hymn to brooding memory, the enduring need to inhabit story, and a haunting insistence upon endless possibilities within possibility. That is to say, hope." --Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight"
Well, somehow those reviewers got more from the book than did I. At a sentence level, beautifully written (hence the three stars) and many of the passages describing the actual solo hike are mesmerizing, however, I found the archivist's passages more trick than literary nourishment and her obsession as inexplicable as the amount of material she's able to collect and the conclusions she draws are incredible.
Then there's that ending. It's not an ending at all really. The novel simply comes to an abrupt stop. I was left full of unanswered questions and perplexed by symbols that appeared suddenly and without explanation on the last few pages. I had the feeling throughout that I was supposed to be approaching a profound epiphany of the type Ochsner clearly experienced when she wrote her blurb of the book, and I admit I fear I have failed somehow. I would be delighted if someone would explain to me what I've missed here.
I'm usually quite good at deciphering meaning, but I'm blank on this one.
Anyone?
From Jade Colbert at the Globe & Mail: "At the heart of Martha Baillie's fragmentary, highly original new novel is an inexplicable event. In 1980, at age 20, Heinrich Schlögel escapes his West German birthplace to hike Baffin Island's interior. The trip lasts two weeks, but when he returns the year is 2010 and he has not aged a day. His biography, the one we read, comes to us via an amateur archivist (also German, transplanted in Toronto) who has compiled "the Schlögel archive": letters, photographs, books read, and other bits of ephemera related to the young man. How much of the story is the archivist's invention? The use of an unreliable narrator has a point here: Baillie is turning the tables on the European, who has taken the place usually held by the "native" as specimen of study. The result is a philosophic, absorbing read on photography, the North, colonialism, ethnography, and the nature of time."
From the back of the book:
"The story of a young man who escapes the claustrophobia of small-town Germany by travelling to Canada, where he sets out on a long solo hike into the interior of Baffin Island. Soon time begins to play tricks on him. Yanked from the twentieth century and deposited in the twenty-first, Heinrich lands in a disorienting, digital Present where a computer-nimble Pangnirtung teenager befriends him. She lives with her grandmother who rents Heinrich a room. "Capacious, capricious, mischievous, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel moves like a quantum experiment, defying boundaries of time, place, chronology. Fluid as light itself, animated by startling imagery, vivid and peculiar characters, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel is a hymn to brooding memory, the enduring need to inhabit story, and a haunting insistence upon endless possibilities within possibility. That is to say, hope." --Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight"
Well, somehow those reviewers got more from the book than did I. At a sentence level, beautifully written (hence the three stars) and many of the passages describing the actual solo hike are mesmerizing, however, I found the archivist's passages more trick than literary nourishment and her obsession as inexplicable as the amount of material she's able to collect and the conclusions she draws are incredible.
Then there's that ending. It's not an ending at all really. The novel simply comes to an abrupt stop. I was left full of unanswered questions and perplexed by symbols that appeared suddenly and without explanation on the last few pages. I had the feeling throughout that I was supposed to be approaching a profound epiphany of the type Ochsner clearly experienced when she wrote her blurb of the book, and I admit I fear I have failed somehow. I would be delighted if someone would explain to me what I've missed here.
I'm usually quite good at deciphering meaning, but I'm blank on this one.
November 24, 2014
This dreamlike tale within a tale is a story of the nature of obsession and its displacement.
Within this fantasy is jarring reality, the crushing lonliness and the cold, and a community that has the power to restore life.
Within this fantasy is jarring reality, the crushing lonliness and the cold, and a community that has the power to restore life.
June 14, 2018
I can't really explain why I loved this so much, I just do. I thank the universe for sending this book my way at the time that it did.
June 16, 2019
I loved the character and story of Heinrich Schlogel, the titular and main focus of this novel, and the prose was beautiful. His story was a profound exploration of living with our histories—personal and collective--particularly colonial genocide. The archivist, a sort of framing, but secondary story, also considered living with our choices, owning them. But it was Heinrich I was drawn to, and always felt in a hurry to get back to.
April 30, 2023
disappointing ending, to my mind.
January 19, 2015
It was no surprise to me that this was an original novel, because Martha has an original mind. This novel is meta but in an original and elegant way. Fowles may have been on of the innovators of that form in the French Lieutenant’s Woman but Baillie takes it to a new level.
When the novel opens, we meet the eponymous Heinrich, and gradually come to know that he has an eccentric, agoraphobic, brilliant sister. Heinrich is a bit of a mystery to the reader as well as the unnamed archivist who brings us his story, and that’s the one of the engines Baillie uses to compel the story (in addition to the mystery of the lost time itself). Who is Heinrich Schlögel? How can she come to understand what propelled him across the Atlantic to Baffin Island, and of what happened to him there? How well can any author of any text know the characters in it?
The novel follows his journey to the Canadian North, and the fateful two-week hiking trip that deposits him on the other side of a 30-year-gap that he can neither escape nor understand. The archivist tries to retrace his footsteps to better understand these facts, and slyly reveals the sort of things that creep into a fiction: a fabric in a window becomes the curtain material in his home (p 48), a “real” photograph that might have inspired the entire story (appendix), a dream about a fish-processing plant (p163). She alludes to the myriad decisions a novelist makes in the construction of a world: “How did they get from the sidewalk into the café? Who led, who followed? Did they walk quickly or slowly?” (p 218)
Throughout, she threads a novelist’s anxieties via the archivist’s: for existential validation (“How do I define pleasure? The search for, and wondrous discovery of, each new artifact? Decipher, elabourate, speculate, turn upside down, reconsider, arrange, classify? Am I leading an irresponsible life, given how little time is left?... But what if my search leads successfully to Heinrich?”, p91), and to find the true story in the one she’s making (“That is the best story, Inge: your desire for my happiness. That is the story I’m selecting as the truth.” p 122)
And then there’s the matter of the archivist’s search for him, and her painstaking inquiry into the animal that is Heinrich of Tettnang. Reviewers have suggested that this is Baillie turning the tables, anthropologically speaking: a European who came to Inuit territory is being examined, rather than the other way around. I don’t doubt that was her intention.
Her final chapter, an appendix, is a “debrief” that purports to describe the photograph that inspired the fiction. She made me Google search for it. The final laugh is her own. Does the photograph exist, or not?
When the novel opens, we meet the eponymous Heinrich, and gradually come to know that he has an eccentric, agoraphobic, brilliant sister. Heinrich is a bit of a mystery to the reader as well as the unnamed archivist who brings us his story, and that’s the one of the engines Baillie uses to compel the story (in addition to the mystery of the lost time itself). Who is Heinrich Schlögel? How can she come to understand what propelled him across the Atlantic to Baffin Island, and of what happened to him there? How well can any author of any text know the characters in it?
The novel follows his journey to the Canadian North, and the fateful two-week hiking trip that deposits him on the other side of a 30-year-gap that he can neither escape nor understand. The archivist tries to retrace his footsteps to better understand these facts, and slyly reveals the sort of things that creep into a fiction: a fabric in a window becomes the curtain material in his home (p 48), a “real” photograph that might have inspired the entire story (appendix), a dream about a fish-processing plant (p163). She alludes to the myriad decisions a novelist makes in the construction of a world: “How did they get from the sidewalk into the café? Who led, who followed? Did they walk quickly or slowly?” (p 218)
Throughout, she threads a novelist’s anxieties via the archivist’s: for existential validation (“How do I define pleasure? The search for, and wondrous discovery of, each new artifact? Decipher, elabourate, speculate, turn upside down, reconsider, arrange, classify? Am I leading an irresponsible life, given how little time is left?... But what if my search leads successfully to Heinrich?”, p91), and to find the true story in the one she’s making (“That is the best story, Inge: your desire for my happiness. That is the story I’m selecting as the truth.” p 122)
And then there’s the matter of the archivist’s search for him, and her painstaking inquiry into the animal that is Heinrich of Tettnang. Reviewers have suggested that this is Baillie turning the tables, anthropologically speaking: a European who came to Inuit territory is being examined, rather than the other way around. I don’t doubt that was her intention.
Her final chapter, an appendix, is a “debrief” that purports to describe the photograph that inspired the fiction. She made me Google search for it. The final laugh is her own. Does the photograph exist, or not?
November 12, 2014
I loved this book on several levels. I felt I could have written it. I could be the protagonist. I have interests that are close to most of the main characters, and I have felt and seen imagery described.
The plat is simple, at first. The narrator, who is unnamed, becomes obsessed by a photo of a young man that was taken on a street in Toronto. She (I believe the narrator is female) begins a quest to locate the man in the picture, Heinrich Schlogel. This Mr. Schlogel is German. Slowly, we find his character fill out and the narrative progresses. He is fascinated with the Canadian arctic and begins planning a trip to follow in the footsteps of an arctic explorer, Samuel Hearne.
He makes it to Canada and after several detours, begins his walk into the wilderness. This is where things get dicey. This is where magical realism takes over. Something (I will not mention what) happens to Heinrich Schlogel during his solo hike.
The storyline takes some very interesting turns after he emerges from the wilds. Now, he begins a search for his sister, who has moved to Canada from Germany.
To say anymore about the plot now would be to reveal spoilers. I'm not going to do that. Read this book and become transported to a different reality and experience something mystical. i have seen remote sub-arctic regions and felt the same feelings of powerlessness in the face of "the void."
I only finished the book last night and already I can see several interpretations of what happened and the true meaning of the novel.
The plat is simple, at first. The narrator, who is unnamed, becomes obsessed by a photo of a young man that was taken on a street in Toronto. She (I believe the narrator is female) begins a quest to locate the man in the picture, Heinrich Schlogel. This Mr. Schlogel is German. Slowly, we find his character fill out and the narrative progresses. He is fascinated with the Canadian arctic and begins planning a trip to follow in the footsteps of an arctic explorer, Samuel Hearne.
He makes it to Canada and after several detours, begins his walk into the wilderness. This is where things get dicey. This is where magical realism takes over. Something (I will not mention what) happens to Heinrich Schlogel during his solo hike.
The storyline takes some very interesting turns after he emerges from the wilds. Now, he begins a search for his sister, who has moved to Canada from Germany.
To say anymore about the plot now would be to reveal spoilers. I'm not going to do that. Read this book and become transported to a different reality and experience something mystical. i have seen remote sub-arctic regions and felt the same feelings of powerlessness in the face of "the void."
I only finished the book last night and already I can see several interpretations of what happened and the true meaning of the novel.
April 12, 2016
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
This is the newest title to arrive in our mailbox from our friends at Canadian experimental publisher Pedlar Press, and I'm always glad to receive their gorgeous and well-done books, even though I have to admit that I'm usually only so-so about their actual avant-garde contents. In this case, that's a fictional biography of a man who doesn't seem at first to have done much worth writing about, but that in good Nabokovian style quickly turns into much more -- a meditation on existence by the obsessed biographer telling the tale, the dreamlike narrative of the subject's day-to-day life, and a clever collection of scanned found objects associated with the mystery, done up in Pedlar's usual beautiful design and attention to detail. Not a book for those expecting a traditional three-act tale, what you think of the story itself will depend a lot on what you think of experimental literature to begin with; but Pedlar at least always puts out some of the best-looking and most conceptually solid experimental books currently on the market, which is what makes finding a new title in the mail always a treat.
Out of 10: 8.0, or 9.0 for fans of experimental literature
This is the newest title to arrive in our mailbox from our friends at Canadian experimental publisher Pedlar Press, and I'm always glad to receive their gorgeous and well-done books, even though I have to admit that I'm usually only so-so about their actual avant-garde contents. In this case, that's a fictional biography of a man who doesn't seem at first to have done much worth writing about, but that in good Nabokovian style quickly turns into much more -- a meditation on existence by the obsessed biographer telling the tale, the dreamlike narrative of the subject's day-to-day life, and a clever collection of scanned found objects associated with the mystery, done up in Pedlar's usual beautiful design and attention to detail. Not a book for those expecting a traditional three-act tale, what you think of the story itself will depend a lot on what you think of experimental literature to begin with; but Pedlar at least always puts out some of the best-looking and most conceptually solid experimental books currently on the market, which is what makes finding a new title in the mail always a treat.
Out of 10: 8.0, or 9.0 for fans of experimental literature
October 19, 2018
The search for Heinrich Schlögel is definitely one of a kind.
The plot is overall quite simple - Heinrich goes to the Arctic planning 12 days trail in the nature, and comes back 30 years later, without having aged and without knowing that 30 years have indeed passed.
The story is narrated by a stranger, who developed an interest in him after seeing a picture in a newspaper.
Beautifully written, and in most parts very captivating, this book is definitely worth reading... But it left me with so many unanswered questions that I'm also quite disappointed. Who is this person who is in search for Heinrich? What is this obsession about? What happened to Heinrich? What was the meaning of his 'time travelling'? I feel like I'm failing to understand something important to the novel, that I don't get the key of the story.
I don't know, maybe I'll have to read it again.
The plot is overall quite simple - Heinrich goes to the Arctic planning 12 days trail in the nature, and comes back 30 years later, without having aged and without knowing that 30 years have indeed passed.
The story is narrated by a stranger, who developed an interest in him after seeing a picture in a newspaper.
Beautifully written, and in most parts very captivating, this book is definitely worth reading... But it left me with so many unanswered questions that I'm also quite disappointed. Who is this person who is in search for Heinrich? What is this obsession about? What happened to Heinrich? What was the meaning of his 'time travelling'? I feel like I'm failing to understand something important to the novel, that I don't get the key of the story.
I don't know, maybe I'll have to read it again.
March 5, 2015
I usually avoid magical realism as a genre; nevertheless, our book club selected this novel which was mesmerizing. There are so many levels of discovery from Heinrich's fascination with recreating a journey to the arctic to his sister Inge's linguistic abilities to his father's walks and love of Schiller. The trip to Canada takes a different route, but is one that is stark, beautiful, horrifying, and most magical. Heinrich, like Rip Van Winkle, loses thirty years as he enters the wilderness in the late seventies and re-enters the world of the twenty-first century. Who knew so much had happened---especially technology. Most of all there are infinite lessons in Baillie's book---especially from the Inuit characters past and present. Worthy selection and worth another read.
November 7, 2014
I felt that I was reading this book underwater. It is surreal and hypnotic. The story of Heinrich Schlogel is told by an anonymous narrator who nonetheless shares much of her own relationship with her parents. The book is about family, separation and the passage of time. Heinrich and his familial relationships are foremost in the story but we see also those of the narrator and of the Inuit people he or his sister Inge encounter both personally and in history. It is lovely to read but has only questions , no answers.
October 25, 2014
This book starts slowly, babbles on, and never really goes anywhere that makes sense. The only characters I liked were Vicky and Sarah. The non ending was TERRIBLE. I thought to myself "I just read 346 pages and THAT'S all of a wrap up the author could manage?" A let down, a disappointment, a frustrating waste of time. Skip this book, unless you enjoy being led down an icy garden path with no rhyme, reason or logical ending.
August 3, 2015
Fascinating, interesting novel that fell a bit short of wrapping up its promise in the last 15 pages, but still highly recommended.
September 14, 2022
This is a good book, and well-written. It just wasn't the book I thought I was getting involved with.
It was recommended as "science fiction", but despite the lost time experienced by Shlogel, it falls more firmly into "magical realism", a much harder genre to tackle (writing and reading), in my opinion.
I think the author gets a lot of things right: the descriptions of Heinrich's journey, including the arctic landscape. The rhythm of the writing is almost hypnotic in these sections, lulling you into your own sense of smallness and disorientation in the face of the wilderness. The people Heinrich meets are interesting in their own right, and his experiences feel real and tangible in the face of the more extraordinary aspects of events.
Where the book loses me is in the frame narrative. The obsessive 'archivist' seeking out Schlogel trinkets and marginalia. I had no interest in that story whatsoever, and the character of the archivist was uninteresting. It could have been a great aspect of the book, but just fell flat.
It was recommended as "science fiction", but despite the lost time experienced by Shlogel, it falls more firmly into "magical realism", a much harder genre to tackle (writing and reading), in my opinion.
I think the author gets a lot of things right: the descriptions of Heinrich's journey, including the arctic landscape. The rhythm of the writing is almost hypnotic in these sections, lulling you into your own sense of smallness and disorientation in the face of the wilderness. The people Heinrich meets are interesting in their own right, and his experiences feel real and tangible in the face of the more extraordinary aspects of events.
Where the book loses me is in the frame narrative. The obsessive 'archivist' seeking out Schlogel trinkets and marginalia. I had no interest in that story whatsoever, and the character of the archivist was uninteresting. It could have been a great aspect of the book, but just fell flat.
May 6, 2018
Each of Martha Baillie's books is an entirely new reading experience. What they all have in common is outstandingly literate, evocative, insightful writing and this one surpasses all the others I've read so far. Many passages were so spectacular that I found myself going back to re-read them several times, just to marinate in the unexpected leaps of language Baillie conjures up to evoke a character or a situation. Although this is a book of pure fiction, she employs a creative trick to make everything compellingly real: by means of footnotes, she inserts herself into the narrative as a researcher attempting to unravel Heinrich's strange story.
The story is greatly enriched by local color, whether the setting is a small town in Germany, downtown Toronto or especially when depicting the day-to-day life of a far north town (Pangnirtung) complete with the unique attitudes and wry humor that characterizes the Inuit.
Brilliant! A book to be owned and re-visited.
The story is greatly enriched by local color, whether the setting is a small town in Germany, downtown Toronto or especially when depicting the day-to-day life of a far north town (Pangnirtung) complete with the unique attitudes and wry humor that characterizes the Inuit.
Brilliant! A book to be owned and re-visited.
June 2, 2018
This is book is just one of those ones that a person has to read for themselves to fully experience it. It follows the life of Heinrich as he embarks on an amazing journey. Growing up feeling claustrophobic he finds a direction to strive for when his sister Inge gives him a book on the journeys of Samuel Hearne in the Canadian Arctic. Once he embarks on his journey he has no idea how it would come to take place.
The story is a story written from the view of an archivist who discovers a photograph of Heinrich and has a compulsive curiosity to discover his story and where he came to be. While telling the story you discover just a glimpse of what it is like when a historian discovers one tiny tidbit and runs with it developing an entire story, and the lengths they go to discover new evidence.
A very good read although I would like to point out that it would not be for someone looking for an easy going read.
The story is a story written from the view of an archivist who discovers a photograph of Heinrich and has a compulsive curiosity to discover his story and where he came to be. While telling the story you discover just a glimpse of what it is like when a historian discovers one tiny tidbit and runs with it developing an entire story, and the lengths they go to discover new evidence.
A very good read although I would like to point out that it would not be for someone looking for an easy going read.
April 24, 2020
Have you ever picked a book by its cover without knowing anything about it? That is how I picked The Search For Heinrich Schlogel. I was captivated by the cover photo.
Heinrich grew up in a small German town famous for its hops. His sister who he is very close to becomes unhinged. Heinrich becomes obsessed with an Arctic explorer who decides to travel to Northwest Canada and spend a couple of weeks hiking. Somehow he manages to emerge from his travels and thirty years have gone by. He then attempts to reconnect with his parents and track down his sister. I liked Heinrich’s character and how easily he is accepted by and bonds with people. He is such an unassuming guy.
The story is told by a narrator who is piecing together Heinrich’s story by purchasing letters and documents and talking to people who remember Heinrich.
The story did not draw me in until halfway through when Heinrich goes off on his quest. Then it becomes mysterious and magical.
Heinrich grew up in a small German town famous for its hops. His sister who he is very close to becomes unhinged. Heinrich becomes obsessed with an Arctic explorer who decides to travel to Northwest Canada and spend a couple of weeks hiking. Somehow he manages to emerge from his travels and thirty years have gone by. He then attempts to reconnect with his parents and track down his sister. I liked Heinrich’s character and how easily he is accepted by and bonds with people. He is such an unassuming guy.
The story is told by a narrator who is piecing together Heinrich’s story by purchasing letters and documents and talking to people who remember Heinrich.
The story did not draw me in until halfway through when Heinrich goes off on his quest. Then it becomes mysterious and magical.
August 18, 2025
Weird, endearing, adventurous and fascinating. This book was reminiscent of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—I am impressed. The writing was absolutely beautiful: “Silence refused to let her in. Language performed its mischief in the recesses of her brain. Unwanted sentences kept firing. Voices argued. She could cover her ears but language inhabited her.” “Much handled and well cared for, the hammers, the files, and the pliers spoke one language, and the raw poverty of the room, with its few pieces of battered furniture, it’s sink full of dishes, it’s old stove and peeling countertop, spoke another language.”
May 26, 2018
3.5 stars
A hypnotic book dealing with themes of acceptance, time, and the ephemeral. I might almost call this book magical realism.
Although I did enjoy this book, I was expecting it to be very different than it was based on its description. The atmosphere of this book was incredible, but I did not feel the conclusion lived up to the beautiful tone and setup of the remainder of the book.
A hypnotic book dealing with themes of acceptance, time, and the ephemeral. I might almost call this book magical realism.
Although I did enjoy this book, I was expecting it to be very different than it was based on its description. The atmosphere of this book was incredible, but I did not feel the conclusion lived up to the beautiful tone and setup of the remainder of the book.
December 18, 2019
An intriguing book with themes most of us can likely relate to. The Search for Heinrich Schlögel is one of those books that will be remembered more for the imagery and impressions it leaves behind than for its plot. Definitely worth reading for its interesting imagery and creative concepts alone, but those looking for resolution or explanation at the end may be left wanting.
December 4, 2022
An unbelievably beautiful and haunting read. It's a surreal, but very simple, book. The archive-like presentation makes you feel detached but still invested in the story, and the vivid language makes every detail clear. It's a perfect combination of clarity and mystery. I loved every word.
September 8, 2019
I could not determine what the author was trying to convey.
February 10, 2020
The cover claims the book is about a German man who goes traveling to Canada. The mystery of who the archivist is said to be another feature. Neither intrigued me at all. Shelved it at page 87.
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