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The work was okay, and then Book II began. All has fallen, into revolting bourgeois jealousy on his end, and pathetic servility and self-loathing on her end. I resent Erpenbeck for betraying these characters like this—that is the ultimate betrayal in this work!

Getting through the rest of this will be a slog, I suspect. Possessive love, what a bore.

As with Chinatown (yet even more so), the shadow of Bernard looms large over the prose style here.

The shadow of Thomas Bernhard looms large over this collection. Krasz has always had a bit of that Austrian in him, but in stories like “Chasing Waterfalls” the Hungarian’s style is all but swallowed up by the influence of Bernhard’s, down to the specific repeated phrases, and italics. However, the works lack Bernhard’s focus, his myopic mania, with the result that many stories here seem undisciplined.

The work is at its strongest when the narrator lets her creativity run wild, developing imagined scenes and invented histories. The work is at its worst when it indulges a masochistic sentimentality, leaving me with contempt for the perpetually-weeping narrator, hopelessly lost in her memories.