There was no chemistry between this novel and me although all signs on heaven and Earth indicated I was going to love it. I adore psychological novelsThere was no chemistry between this novel and me although all signs on heaven and Earth indicated I was going to love it. I adore psychological novels. I am obsessed with books about teachers as if eighty-five colleagues I meet at work every day were not enough. I am interested in books about Holocaust. And last but not least, I have hunted for this novel for a long time and it usually whets my appetite. Strangely enough, with so many boxes ticked, I am feeling disappointed.
The Teacher (2016) by Michal Ben-Naftali, which I read in Italian translation, is a blend of a novel, memoir, biography and historical reportage. The narrator grapples to understand her controversial former teacher, Elsa Weiss, who committed suicide, and decides to reconstruct her past. The process is painstaking. As there was almost no evidence left and Elsa was a very private person, her biography had to be invented almost from scratch. Its beginning was really enticing but then it lost momentum and I struggled to wade through its cold bleakness.
Michal Ben-Naftali became a teacher also and I loved her brilliant reflections on this job. Unfortunately, the part devoted to Elsa Weiss, which is 99% of the novel, did not resonate with me as much as I hoped. Most of the time the author laboriously analyses her teacher's personality. And the weird thing is Elsa seems even more distant and unrelatable at the end of the novel than on the first pages. I regret the author did not trust her readers more. The only voice you really hear in this novel is hers, not Elsa's. I wish she had let the protagonist interact with the readers instead of putting herself in the middle as a constant facilitator.
One more problem: I am not a historian, and I cannot judge Michal Ben-Naftali's accuracy, but I found her depiction of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp rather superficial. I do not think she managed to convey the monstrosity of this place. Besides, I wonder if it is possible that liberated prisoners were accommodated in single rooms in Swiss hotels.
Many books about Holocaust end when the gates to concentration camps open and we assume the characters lived happily ever after. Not exactly, as they had to face traumatic memories every single day. Elsa Weiss' portrayal in The Teacher reveals how deep and destructive these psychical scars were, how difficult, sometimes impossible, it was to communicate with people who had not had similar experiences. I appreciate Michal Ben-Naftali's courage to address this problem but I wish her novel was not so bland and cold. I guess its iciness was supposed to reflect Elsa's emotional atrophy caused by her nightmarish past but I could not immerse myself in The Teacher because of that. The best book I have ever read on this topic is A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz by Göran Rosenberg.
A lesson learnt from The Teacher: do not jack up your hopes sky high before you actually start reading a book.
[image] Nora Bilderwelten, Sense of Wonder and Mystery....more
’Reality is nothing else than the sum of all the stories that people constantly tell themselves.’ Juli Zeh, Anno Nuovo (New Year)
Is there a better date’Reality is nothing else than the sum of all the stories that people constantly tell themselves.’ Juli Zeh, Anno Nuovo (New Year)
Is there a better date to review New Year (2019) by Juli Zeh than the first of January? I doubt it so please, bear with me. I promise to be brief, especially given the fact that the less you know in advance about the plot the better.
Let me start with a technical detail: you might be surprised that I read an Italian translation. Either English or Polish versions were not available at the time when I compulsively bought it and – of course! – I was too impatient to wait. The good thing is I read the second book in Italian and it was a wonderful experience. I do not feel confident enough to assess the quality of the Italian translation but as the story immediately swept me away, like a rapid current, chances are that Madeira Giacci might have done a top-notch job.
It is difficult to explain the impact of Juli Zeh’s prose: it just effortlessly pierces you. Neither the blurb nor the cover gives this book justice. The transformation of a trivial story into something which keeps you literally perplexed, is a work of literary magic. You can find it in New Year, especially in its middle part. I was not very happy about the ending – it was abrupt and it did not convince me.
Many books are described as unputdownable but Juli Zeh gives this word a different meaning: I was totally captivated, so eager to know what happened to Hennig and Luna, that I simply could not stop reading. I was utterly immersed in the story. ‘The Thing’ (at some point it is revealed what it is) that bothers adult Henning is described so vividly that I almost felt physically some symptoms also. I loved shifting realities in New Year, the way they seep into each other: present <--> past, real life <--> memories and dreams, light<--> darkness. I was in awe of the way the author juxtaposed the breathtaking scenery of Lanzarote, the abundance of its nature, with the shadowiness inside the characters.
It is the third book by Juli Zeh which I read and it cemented her as one of my all time favourite authors.
