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das alles hier, jetzt
"das alles hier, jetzt." handelt vom Umgang mit dem Tod einer eng befreundeten Person und einer Reise quer durch Raum und Zeit. Stern beschreibt eindringlich die Ohnmacht in den Wochen nach dem Tod und den Sog des Erinnerns, der die Vergangenheit festhalten will, bevor die Erzählung in einer unerhörten Befreiungsaktion aus der Trauer mündet.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 7, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 16, 2024
Grief is never an easy subject to write about in literature, however it does feature a lot. The question is how can someone approach this topic in an innovative way? obviously there are authors who have managed, Max Porter transposed grief with Ted Hughes poem Crow in his book Grief is the Thing with feathers, Ami Rao explored grief using Barthes in her novel Almost and not to mention Sigried Nunez’ The Friend which uses dog acquisition in order to examine the nuances of grief.
Anna Stern all this here, now also manages to give a innovative spin.
Ananke has died and it has affected their family and friends in different ways. The narrator of the book, who is close to Ananke speaks about the pain they are feeling without Ananke and the void that is left.
all this here’s now structure makes this grief narrative stand out: the pages on the left consist of Ananke dying, their funeral , Here’s there is a lot of pain, at seeing Ananke die, the funeral, Ananke in the casket and the general sense of loss and how it affects each character.
The pages on the right take place in the past where the narrator remembers their time with Ananke; simple memories such as going to a beach or a walk.
The narratives converge until the last twenty pages or so take place in the present when the everyone Ananke was close to gathers together and go on a pilgrimage in order to spread their ashes.
There are a lot of beautiful, heartfelt moments and this is another strength of the book; each detail is scrutinized yet the prose is evocative. One can feel the sorrow these people had for Ananke and it transfers itself to the reader. The sections about memory capture the blissful sunniness of being young, while the more grief filled sections convey sadness in a non manipulative way.
Stylistically the book is all in lowercase and does not use any gender related words, and still one gathers who is a parent of a child through the clues dropped through out the novel.
Anna Stern. has managed to turn a theme which is often written about and give it a fresh outlook. all this here. now may be the equally the most heart tugging and playful book you’ve ever read.
Anna Stern all this here, now also manages to give a innovative spin.
Ananke has died and it has affected their family and friends in different ways. The narrator of the book, who is close to Ananke speaks about the pain they are feeling without Ananke and the void that is left.
all this here’s now structure makes this grief narrative stand out: the pages on the left consist of Ananke dying, their funeral , Here’s there is a lot of pain, at seeing Ananke die, the funeral, Ananke in the casket and the general sense of loss and how it affects each character.
The pages on the right take place in the past where the narrator remembers their time with Ananke; simple memories such as going to a beach or a walk.
The narratives converge until the last twenty pages or so take place in the present when the everyone Ananke was close to gathers together and go on a pilgrimage in order to spread their ashes.
There are a lot of beautiful, heartfelt moments and this is another strength of the book; each detail is scrutinized yet the prose is evocative. One can feel the sorrow these people had for Ananke and it transfers itself to the reader. The sections about memory capture the blissful sunniness of being young, while the more grief filled sections convey sadness in a non manipulative way.
Stylistically the book is all in lowercase and does not use any gender related words, and still one gathers who is a parent of a child through the clues dropped through out the novel.
Anna Stern. has managed to turn a theme which is often written about and give it a fresh outlook. all this here. now may be the equally the most heart tugging and playful book you’ve ever read.
June 8, 2024
you had already tried to write, before, but it's only now after ananke's death, that words come to you the way you'd always imagined they would. your earlier writings were nothing but cleverly constructed plots with no substance, every sentence edited so patiently, with such circumspection, that your stories were like teflon, not mirrors for the reader or windows into a new world. now you sit down, take pen in hand, and just write. you don't try to figure out what's different now - you don't want to look at it too closely, for a change. you're afraid, after losing ananke, of losing this new crutch too.
'all this here, now' (2024) is Damion Searls' translation of 'das alles hier, jetzt' (2020) by Anna Stern (the penname of Anna Bischofberger, who, besides being an author of this innovative work is a researcher into antimicrobial resistance. The original won the 2020 Schweizer Buchpreis and the 2023 Prisma Prize for LGBTQI+ Literatur.
Written in lower case, and with no genderised pronouns or language, this is a powerful exploration of friendship and loss, centering around the death of the narrator's friend, ananke, in their mid 20s.
The first section of the novel (c180 pages) is written in typically page long vignettes and presented in two intertwined sections - the left hand page, a journal of the narrator's experience immediately after they learn of ananke's death, and the right hand side, in a fainter font, their memories of their friendship, one of 9084 days the now you had in common.
The first four pages read (where I've used bold for the bolder font):
anake dies on a winter’s morning, in the afternoon, between four and five
we never give each other presents, the only thing we give each other are our names: ananke gives me the name ichor
the month is unusally overcast throughout the country. in the mountains this is one of the coldest februaries in the past thirty years. only rarely does a little snowfall reach the flatlands. towards the end of the month, chilly continental air from the northeast brings a short cold snap
at roughly the same time, for reasons unexplained at first, the change from i to you.
The remainder of the novel is narrated in the second person, with the narrator addressing themselves, which emphasises the collective nature of their loss, as ananke and ichor are part of a close-knit group, growing up together, and now grieving together, in two families having grown together into one, eating together, celebrating together, four parents and seven children:
bas and roan, ananke's parents, and ananke's siblings fred, vaska and ash
avi and swann, ichor's parents, ichor's twin eden and younger sibling roe
vienna and cato are two other close friend since childhood friends
As for the characters' names, the author has explained (google translation) "some names come from Greek, others I got from books that mean a lot to me, and others are just random strings of letters" ('swann' a nod both to Proust and to the bird, both favourites of Stern).
One key element of the childhood memories, and also the present day, is the dynamic of the relationships ichor has with both their biological twin, eden, and with ananke who is more of a spiritual twin (one early memory has ichor and ananke buying matching pyjamas). But ananke's death pushes eden and ichor closer:
in the weeks right before ananke's death, you seriously considered for the first time moving out of the attic apartment shared with eden. even though you never discussed it. still, you knew eden wouldn't mind. you drew this conclusion from little things, little remarks with which eden seemed to be marking off territory, forestalling future negotiations about shared and separate property. you first became truly aware of this new mode of eden's when suddenly there was a blue tube of toothpaste sitting next to the orange one in your bath-room: you never brought it up but you're sure it was no accident, eden meant something by it. to you this blue tube meant an oblique repudiation, a negation of all the minutes you'd spent scrubbing your teeth together every day since losing your baby teeth. now: without words, the same way you came to an agreement at the start of the year that it would make sense for you to go your separate ways, it's clear: you're both staying right where you are. language fails you as much as before, but still, you cook together more often; you share the toothpaste; you pick eden up from the gym more often, or eden waits for you after work with a bottle of white wine, and you sit together by the river, watching the swans.
The second section, of 40 pages written in more conventional continuous text, begins 150 days after ananke’s death. At a dinner, vienna challenges the other that they need to get rid of ananke who is still with them, and accept their death,
no one says anything. you feel uneasy, you want to say something, contradict vienna, make the speech stop, but there's a lump in your throat as if you'd swallowed a whole egg. don't worry, vienna says, i'm really not totally drunk, i get that ananke is dead, i know what dead means, i know ananke's not coming back, not as ananke, ananke went up in flames, ananke was buried. still, I'm telling you, something must have gone wrong, part of ananke must have escaped and it's not down there, not in the hole. (you don't want to remember it, you try to keep the thought away, but virginia woolf's mrs dalloway pushes right to the front of your mind: that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death... perhaps - perhaps.) and that's what's haunting us, me and all of you; that's what's making us jolt awake in the middle of the night, making us drift through our days like cripples, dangling us around on a string like puppets, supposedly with free will but actually with none.
And the friends steal ananke's ashes from the grave where they've been buried, and take them on a long road trip south.
Impressive and an early contender for the 2025 International Booker.
'all this here, now' (2024) is Damion Searls' translation of 'das alles hier, jetzt' (2020) by Anna Stern (the penname of Anna Bischofberger, who, besides being an author of this innovative work is a researcher into antimicrobial resistance. The original won the 2020 Schweizer Buchpreis and the 2023 Prisma Prize for LGBTQI+ Literatur.
Written in lower case, and with no genderised pronouns or language, this is a powerful exploration of friendship and loss, centering around the death of the narrator's friend, ananke, in their mid 20s.
The first section of the novel (c180 pages) is written in typically page long vignettes and presented in two intertwined sections - the left hand page, a journal of the narrator's experience immediately after they learn of ananke's death, and the right hand side, in a fainter font, their memories of their friendship, one of 9084 days the now you had in common.
The first four pages read (where I've used bold for the bolder font):
anake dies on a winter’s morning, in the afternoon, between four and five
we never give each other presents, the only thing we give each other are our names: ananke gives me the name ichor
the month is unusally overcast throughout the country. in the mountains this is one of the coldest februaries in the past thirty years. only rarely does a little snowfall reach the flatlands. towards the end of the month, chilly continental air from the northeast brings a short cold snap
at roughly the same time, for reasons unexplained at first, the change from i to you.
The remainder of the novel is narrated in the second person, with the narrator addressing themselves, which emphasises the collective nature of their loss, as ananke and ichor are part of a close-knit group, growing up together, and now grieving together, in two families having grown together into one, eating together, celebrating together, four parents and seven children:
bas and roan, ananke's parents, and ananke's siblings fred, vaska and ash
avi and swann, ichor's parents, ichor's twin eden and younger sibling roe
vienna and cato are two other close friend since childhood friends
As for the characters' names, the author has explained (google translation) "some names come from Greek, others I got from books that mean a lot to me, and others are just random strings of letters" ('swann' a nod both to Proust and to the bird, both favourites of Stern).
One key element of the childhood memories, and also the present day, is the dynamic of the relationships ichor has with both their biological twin, eden, and with ananke who is more of a spiritual twin (one early memory has ichor and ananke buying matching pyjamas). But ananke's death pushes eden and ichor closer:
in the weeks right before ananke's death, you seriously considered for the first time moving out of the attic apartment shared with eden. even though you never discussed it. still, you knew eden wouldn't mind. you drew this conclusion from little things, little remarks with which eden seemed to be marking off territory, forestalling future negotiations about shared and separate property. you first became truly aware of this new mode of eden's when suddenly there was a blue tube of toothpaste sitting next to the orange one in your bath-room: you never brought it up but you're sure it was no accident, eden meant something by it. to you this blue tube meant an oblique repudiation, a negation of all the minutes you'd spent scrubbing your teeth together every day since losing your baby teeth. now: without words, the same way you came to an agreement at the start of the year that it would make sense for you to go your separate ways, it's clear: you're both staying right where you are. language fails you as much as before, but still, you cook together more often; you share the toothpaste; you pick eden up from the gym more often, or eden waits for you after work with a bottle of white wine, and you sit together by the river, watching the swans.
The second section, of 40 pages written in more conventional continuous text, begins 150 days after ananke’s death. At a dinner, vienna challenges the other that they need to get rid of ananke who is still with them, and accept their death,
no one says anything. you feel uneasy, you want to say something, contradict vienna, make the speech stop, but there's a lump in your throat as if you'd swallowed a whole egg. don't worry, vienna says, i'm really not totally drunk, i get that ananke is dead, i know what dead means, i know ananke's not coming back, not as ananke, ananke went up in flames, ananke was buried. still, I'm telling you, something must have gone wrong, part of ananke must have escaped and it's not down there, not in the hole. (you don't want to remember it, you try to keep the thought away, but virginia woolf's mrs dalloway pushes right to the front of your mind: that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places after death... perhaps - perhaps.) and that's what's haunting us, me and all of you; that's what's making us jolt awake in the middle of the night, making us drift through our days like cripples, dangling us around on a string like puppets, supposedly with free will but actually with none.
And the friends steal ananke's ashes from the grave where they've been buried, and take them on a long road trip south.
Impressive and an early contender for the 2025 International Booker.
May 6, 2021
Ananke ist tot; und sie hinterlässt eine Leerstelle im Kreis ihrer Freunde und Geschwister. Es folgen Wochen, Monate der Ohnmacht, der Erinnerungen, auch der Reue. Wie geht man mit einem solchen Verlust um? Anna Stern geht dieser Frage auf den Grund, indem sie abwechselnd in die Gegenwart und die Vergangenheit blickt. Manchmal ist ein regelrechter Befreiungsschlag notwendig, um weiterzuleben.
«das alles hier, jetzt.» drückt sehr gut aus, wie sich Verlust anfühlen kann. Auch der Aufbau – gegenüberliegende Buchseiten werden jeweils mit der Gegenwart bzw. der Vergangenheit befüllt, wobei die Erinnerungen verblassen – ist gelungen. Was ich jedoch nicht verstanden habe, ist, weshalb alles kleingeschrieben sein muss. (Mit den seltsamen Namen (egg?) konnte ich mich noch abfinden.) Dieses Schaut-her-wie-speziell-ich-bin-Getue hätte dieses Buch gar nicht nötig.
«das alles hier, jetzt.» drückt sehr gut aus, wie sich Verlust anfühlen kann. Auch der Aufbau – gegenüberliegende Buchseiten werden jeweils mit der Gegenwart bzw. der Vergangenheit befüllt, wobei die Erinnerungen verblassen – ist gelungen. Was ich jedoch nicht verstanden habe, ist, weshalb alles kleingeschrieben sein muss. (Mit den seltsamen Namen (egg?) konnte ich mich noch abfinden.) Dieses Schaut-her-wie-speziell-ich-bin-Getue hätte dieses Buch gar nicht nötig.
May 9, 2021
4.5 sterne. eine sammlung von impressionen und kindheitserinnerungen an eine verstorbene liebste person. dazwischen der versuch, mit dem verlust umzugehen. die beschreibungen von bodensee, zürich erinnern mich stark an meine kindheit. kleinigkeiten wie schlangenbrot überm feuer, schwimmen im rhein, gemeinsam interrailen. nur die konstante kleinschreibung, und die, ungewöhnliche; punktation. haben z.t.
irritiert.
irritiert.
October 5, 2024
sometimes, between the times when you're thinking clearly, you ask yourself, or the question arises, how far back in time you would all have to go to change anything about the present. six months. two years. ten years, or was it already too late the day ananke was born and today was predetermined. the elder trees will be blooming soon. the lake is a deep dark blue, with a gusty south wind hurling waves crowned with pearl-coloured foam away from your shore. the sky's blue is pale and sweet, floating pretty as a postcard between wisps of white clouds. you also think: what would it be like if it was reversed: the water bottomless and eternal, the sky above you the inside of a vaulted tent, tangible, painted blue. (don't forget the sailboats, long since back on the water by this time of year; or the flags fluttering red and white in the wind; or the gulls, that are; and also that the water looks grey up close all of a sudden, not blue anymore.) [140]
December 6, 2020
Irgendwie habe ich das Gefühl, dass es auf der Shortlist zum Schweizer Bücherpreis stärkere Titel als diesen hatte. Aber da es momentan in ist, über den Tod einer geliebten Person zu schreiben, war es eigentlich vorhersehbar, dass dieses Buch das Rennen machen würde.
Der Stil ist ganz interessant. Gegenwart und Vergangenheit gehen praktisch ineinander über, erzählt wird hastig, atemlos. Bleibenden Eindruck wird dieses Werk bei mir leider dennoch nicht hinterlassen, auch wenn es durch seinen Aufbau sehr gut ausdrückt, wie man sich fühlt, wenn man eine geliebte Person verliert.
Aber für eine Auszeichnung ist mir der Inhalt dann doch nicht stark genug. Auch hätte es dem Buch gut getan, noch ein paar Seiten zu streichen. Las ich am Anfang noch recht interessiert, hatte ich irgendwann genug von Erinnerungen daran, wie die Kinder schwimmen gehen, Fahrrad fahren oder Stockbrot machen. Alles schon gelesen.
Der Stil ist ganz interessant. Gegenwart und Vergangenheit gehen praktisch ineinander über, erzählt wird hastig, atemlos. Bleibenden Eindruck wird dieses Werk bei mir leider dennoch nicht hinterlassen, auch wenn es durch seinen Aufbau sehr gut ausdrückt, wie man sich fühlt, wenn man eine geliebte Person verliert.
Aber für eine Auszeichnung ist mir der Inhalt dann doch nicht stark genug. Auch hätte es dem Buch gut getan, noch ein paar Seiten zu streichen. Las ich am Anfang noch recht interessiert, hatte ich irgendwann genug von Erinnerungen daran, wie die Kinder schwimmen gehen, Fahrrad fahren oder Stockbrot machen. Alles schon gelesen.
February 9, 2021
Erinnern Sie sich an ihren Klagenfurt-Text? So in etwa.
November 8, 2022
Erst die letzten paar Seiten haben mich gepackt. Vor allem nach dem weglegen des Buches, wurde mir bewusst, dass ich Teil dieser Gruppe wurde....
August 8, 2024
Intriguing, touching novel. Stern does something quite remarkable in this book about the ramifications of a death amongst a group of friends and family members. I read in an interview with the author that she refuses to categorise people, experiences, psychological states, etc. That she refuses too narrow of a box.
In this book, there are no clear genders, no clear plotlines, no clear events even. What was the exact nature of the relationship between the narrator and Ananke, the friend that died? How did Ananke die? You only get hints.
As a reader, you really have to intuitively connect with this book. You really have to dive into it. Let it resonate. And yes - for me this results in a compelling, mesmerizing read.
In this book, there are no clear genders, no clear plotlines, no clear events even. What was the exact nature of the relationship between the narrator and Ananke, the friend that died? How did Ananke die? You only get hints.
As a reader, you really have to intuitively connect with this book. You really have to dive into it. Let it resonate. And yes - for me this results in a compelling, mesmerizing read.
March 11, 2025
The premature death of Ananke rips a hole in the lives of their friends, one of whom reflects on their shared lives…
I love a grief book, but this was far too much hard work. I think it might have been too avant-garde for me…or trying too hard to be so, I can’t decide. I kind of appreciate what the author was trying to do, but the writing and stylistic choices started to feel laboured and got in the way of the story itself.
The entire thing is written in lowercase, which I suspect is more of a statement in the original German - in English, it’s mostly a mild inconvenience. Crucially though, there are no gender pronouns. Which I initially didn’t notice (in a good way - it shows the sentences flowed naturally). But it started to feel contrived when every character was solely referred to by name - it took me quite some time to realise that some of the characters were in fact parents and not part of the friend group, and I’m not sure what this lack of clarity really achieved. Nouns are gendered in German, so I’m terribly curious about how Serre approached that - by using only neuter nouns?
The story bounces between the past and the present, and the formatting was very clever - the vignettes from the present are printed in black on even pages and, facing them on the odd pages, the memory vignettes are in a dark grey. It’s subtle, but I loved the idea of a visible contrast between a clear present and fading memories.
A demanding story of overwhelming grief, friendship and different forms of love, but the author’s stylistic choices ended up feeling contrived, somewhat obscuring the point.
I love a grief book, but this was far too much hard work. I think it might have been too avant-garde for me…or trying too hard to be so, I can’t decide. I kind of appreciate what the author was trying to do, but the writing and stylistic choices started to feel laboured and got in the way of the story itself.
The entire thing is written in lowercase, which I suspect is more of a statement in the original German - in English, it’s mostly a mild inconvenience. Crucially though, there are no gender pronouns. Which I initially didn’t notice (in a good way - it shows the sentences flowed naturally). But it started to feel contrived when every character was solely referred to by name - it took me quite some time to realise that some of the characters were in fact parents and not part of the friend group, and I’m not sure what this lack of clarity really achieved. Nouns are gendered in German, so I’m terribly curious about how Serre approached that - by using only neuter nouns?
The story bounces between the past and the present, and the formatting was very clever - the vignettes from the present are printed in black on even pages and, facing them on the odd pages, the memory vignettes are in a dark grey. It’s subtle, but I loved the idea of a visible contrast between a clear present and fading memories.
A demanding story of overwhelming grief, friendship and different forms of love, but the author’s stylistic choices ended up feeling contrived, somewhat obscuring the point.
January 29, 2023
Auf der linken Seite die Trauer, um eine viel zu früh verstorbenen Person. Auf der rechten Seite vergangene Erinnerungen an eine gemeinsame Zeit. Über die Hälfte des Buches ist in diesem dualistischem Format geschrieben und gibt der Leseerfahrung eine von mir bisher unbekannten Dynamik. Der zweite Teil des Buches gleicht einem Road Trip, um der verstorbenen Person einen letzten denkwürdigen Abschied zu geben.
Ebenso besonders an dem Buch sind die jeweiligen Namen der Figuren, die sich einer Genderbinarität entziehen. Sowohl Personen als auch der Text selbst entfliehen einer normativen Struktur und spielen hingegen mit nicht-konformen Artikulationsformen.
Die Sprache selbst war syntaktisch auch etwas holprig, was das Lesen für mich allerdings etwas holprig gemacht hat. Auch thematisch hat mir das Buch wenig mitgegeben. Die kreative Formgebung des Ganzen bleibt für mich die Stärke des Werks.
Ebenso besonders an dem Buch sind die jeweiligen Namen der Figuren, die sich einer Genderbinarität entziehen. Sowohl Personen als auch der Text selbst entfliehen einer normativen Struktur und spielen hingegen mit nicht-konformen Artikulationsformen.
Die Sprache selbst war syntaktisch auch etwas holprig, was das Lesen für mich allerdings etwas holprig gemacht hat. Auch thematisch hat mir das Buch wenig mitgegeben. Die kreative Formgebung des Ganzen bleibt für mich die Stärke des Werks.
July 11, 2024
Das Buch war ganz anders als alles was ich bisher gelesen habe. Voller poetischer Sprache und selbst in der Namensgebung der Protagonist*innen und dem Textlayout so anders irgendwie.
Ich fand es am Anfang etwas schwer reinzukommen, weil auf jeder Doppelseite im Buch links von der Gegenwart - nach Anankes Tod und dem Umgang damit - geschrieben wird, während die rechte Seite aus Erinnerungen besteht (deren Schriftfarbe verblasster ist, was ich sehr bedeutsam fand!).
Das ist eine Geschichte von Verlust, und dem Umgang damit, von Liebe, von Freundschaft, von Kindheit, und dem Erwachsenwerden.
Mochte es sehr 🩵
Ich fand es am Anfang etwas schwer reinzukommen, weil auf jeder Doppelseite im Buch links von der Gegenwart - nach Anankes Tod und dem Umgang damit - geschrieben wird, während die rechte Seite aus Erinnerungen besteht (deren Schriftfarbe verblasster ist, was ich sehr bedeutsam fand!).
Das ist eine Geschichte von Verlust, und dem Umgang damit, von Liebe, von Freundschaft, von Kindheit, und dem Erwachsenwerden.
Mochte es sehr 🩵
February 4, 2023
4.5
Wonderful book about grief.
Wonderful book about grief.
February 6, 2025
bawled my eyes out
October 27, 2025
4.5 ⭐️
October 3, 2021
Ungewöhnlicher Stil, namenlose Personen, Trauerbewältigung, Roadtrip
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews