The Summer House, Later

By Judith Hermann

Book Overview

The bestselling voice of Europe's fastest-growing, fastest-living city: the new Berlin.

'The little jewellery box also held the red coral bracelet from Nikolai Sergeyevich. Its six hundred and seventy-five little coral beads were strung onto a silken thread, and they glowed as red as rage. My great-grandmother put the hairbrush down in her lap. She closed her eyes for a long time. Then she opened her eyes again, took the red coral bracelet from the little box and fastened it around her left wrist. Her skin was very white. That evening, for the first time in three years, she shared a meal with my great-grandfather.'

Coral bracelets 'as red as rage' from Russian lovers; a sad old woman who nonetheless 'sometimes sang and winked with her left eye and laughed till the tears came'; country houses 'away from Berlin, linden trees out front, chestnuts in the back, sky above' 'The Summer House, Later' is an elegant, measured, reflective collection of stories which captures beautifully the promise of bright colours lying just out of reach of our grey daily routines.

Set in and around Europe's fastest-growing, fastest-living city, these stories take as their starting point the monotony of modern urban life - the endless antennas and chimneys, the pigeons in the gutters - and looks beyond them to 'the narrow strip of sky over the rooftops'. The literary sensation of the year in her native Germany, Judith Hermann is a wonderfully talented young writer whose ability to find drama and beauty in the smallest, most trivial moments makes 'The Summer House, Later' a very special debut indeed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007115768
• ISBN13: 9780007115761
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Flamingo
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

:)

It's true that there seem to be no conclusion in the stories. However, the stories are original, and the depictions of the environments are beautiful. The stories are dream-like.

Magnificent , descriptive and yet remote

This book is set of short stories translated from German. I am not sure whether it is the authors gift or this gift in combination with the translation which give these stories their sense of remoteness and in some cases alienation. In most fiction, the author strives to involve the reader as closely as possible with the character and the narrative, however in these stories, the reader is held at a remove, the characters...