The first two sections of this novel took my breath away. I slowed my pace down to a close-reading level, absorbing the resonances between the first two possible lives of this girl-child and entertaining the possibilities in subtle shifts that might change a life. I immediately found it more profound than Kate Atkinson's Life After Life which starts at a galloping pace (and a very different style). An infant who suffers a crib-death finds herself with suicidal ideations in another life: "Does he...

Ruminating (over) lifeReading the German author Jenny Erpenbeck always is quite a challenge. In this novel too, you are constantly puzzling: who is talking here, what is it about, how does this chapter relate to the others, etc…? Endless questions that may not even be relevant.What keeps recurring is the theme of the leanness of life: a child’s life that is broken in the bud by cot death, a girl who suddenly commits suicide together with a boy, an activist woman who is constantly on her guard ag...

“The End Of Days” was published nearly the same time as Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life” which is interesting that two authors had a similar idea at the same time. I favor “The End Of Days” in comparison of the two. Erpenbeck went deeper into the idea of: what if events were different, how would that affect a life? How would one person change based upon events. What part of our character is a result of events and what is inherent?In this novel, Erpenbeck wrote five “books” or lives. It’s five d...

This is a profoundly moving book, a poetic reflection on the fragility of life and the endurance of the human spirit which follows the life of a woman through the traumas and upheavals of twentieth century Europe, from Austria to East Berlin via Moscow. In each section of the book, alternative scenarios are explored in which small and apparently random events lead to her early death, and the story often moves focus between global events and deeply personal experiences.

There were moments of great beauty and poignancy in this book, but for some reason it just left me a bit cold - I never really felt a connection. The lack of character names didn't really work for me, I found it too baffling. Probably a case of it's not the book, it's me but still, I feel slightly relieved to have finished!!

A child dies. But this is not the end, no, the beginning. What if she hadn't died? What if her life went on and she died in the despair of unrequited love, or in a senseless pogrom of 'Trotskyite' elements, or celebrated, at the height of literary fame, or in obscurity, forgotten and alone in an old people's home? What does it take to survive the twentieth century? To be tossed on the waves of two wars, the Spanish flu, economic collapse, totalitarian regimes, the fall of communism, and yet keep...

A very interesting and original book, which has the very essential quality of this originality not to be an end in itself but to exist to give a clear message. The author narrates the life of a woman from infancy to deep old age, a life that covers almost the entire 20th century. We follow this life in five separate stages, in the five chapters of the book, with each stage dealing or ending with her death and giving the baton to the next one who deals with what would happen if this death did not...

Jenny Erpenbeck is a Master in the sense in which Colm Toibin refers to Henry James.This is literature at its best. There is the story with its multi-faceted narratives, and there are its words, all repeatedly broken down to their most basic elements and then rebuilt to provide a different narrative for the same story. Reading the story of the life of one woman, we are at all times on shaky ground. The most basic facts involving life, death, even names, are elusive and changing. I had the sense

Incredibly brilliant writing on, essentially, the interconnections between a series of alternate universes. I bought the book without knowing anything about it (except my affection for Erpenbeck), and I think I might have benefited from not knowing the concept (which has been spoiled all over Goodreads, but I won't address it here). This is structurally fascinating - 5 linked short novels that congeal into a whole that sums up a life better than a realist novel could. There are stylistic differe...

A few years ago, I discovered – through the recommendation of a friend – a stunning and poetic little masterpiece titled Visitation, containing a haunting narrative that carefully wove its way in and out of history and time. The author was Jenny Erpenbeck and, since then, I’ve eagerly awaited her newest work. And finally, it’s here.The theme she so beautifully explored – the fluidity of history and time – is front and center of this book as well and, if possible, even more fully realized. Those

Already the title of Jenny Erpenbeck's new novel, ALLER TAGE ABEND (THE END OF ALL DAYS), gives me pause. It is an old fashioned phrase that goes back at least to Martin Luther. The story begins at the grave site of a baby girl, and, while the grandmother accepts this death without questioning the why?, the thoughts of the mother wander into all the possible future lives that the girl might have had... "One death is not the end of all days", first spoken by the grandmother, becomes the underlyin...

I have read 50% of this book and I am no further on than when I had 1% read as this book is making absolutely no sense to me. When is the right time to give up on a book? I hate giving up on a novel but I am getting zero satisfaction from this story and frustration is starting to set in. So I think now is the time to part company with this one. One of the difficulties for me is that neither the main character or her parents, sister, husband, grandparents and great-grandparents are given names (i...

In this book, we follow a single unnamed protagonist as she experiences multiple lifetimes. It is segmented into five parts and covers a wide swath of the twentieth century. We all know that sweeping historic events can change lives in a major way, but this book also shows how one seemingly small action can change its course. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is a bit morbid. I found it hard to feel invested in these multiple lives since they are not covered in any depth. I am impressed by

Death After DeathI read the first long section of this intricate novel in German as Aller Tage Abend over a year ago. It was about the time that Kate Atkinson's Life After Life was going to press, so there can be no accusation of plagiarism between the two authors, but the concepts are nonetheless very similar. Atkinson tells a forty-year story in which a setback in one chapter—an infant's death, say—is immediately followed by another in which that outcome is erased and replaced by an al...

I was much more impressed by this than by Gehen, ging, gegangen, and the two are so different in technique and voice that I can only look forward to going backwards and reading Erpenbeck's even earlier books, before daydreaming about what strange new beast she might publish next.On the other hand both books share a degree of melancholy. Gehen, ging, gegangen opens with a powerful intimation of death, here each of the five books that the volume is divided into is built around a death (there is al...

Breathtaking, vivid writing but it almost didn't feel like the writing belonged in a novel. It felt like it should have been music, instead. As I read I got the same feeling I get when I listen to Barber's Adagio for Strings. As with the Barber piece there are beautiful incantatory phrases that build to piercingly beautiful and very sad resolutions. But the resolutions are lyrical and thematic, rather than providing narrative closure. The language does not build to a resolution as a novel typica...

I found this tremendously powerful and moving. A best of the year book for me, & I immediately want to read everything Erpenbeck has written.

‘’The Lord gave and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up.’’ This book is full of horrors. The horror of losing your newborn child. The horror of being a stranger, unwanted and frowned upon. The horror of oppression, persecution, war, death. The w

I was very disappointed in this book. It started out as a possible 4- or-5-star book for me, and then it’s as if the writer a) grew tired of writing or b) was replaced by a Martian from outer space. Initially to me the book was so good that, knowing I had to write a review, I took a time-out from reading after the first 116 pages and set about writing a synopsis of what had transpired in those pages. I never went back to finishing the synopsis because after that everything after that was written...

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1086662...There is an old man back in my home town in Michigan, my place of birth, who sits alone in a chair in a rest home, no longer aware of who he is or what he is doing there, or anywhere. He no longer remembers what certain words mean nor what gadgets are meant to do, or even why tasks have to be performed. The only meaning left in his life are the brief moments of memory that come to him in a flash, but then mostly escape him. It seems his days are spent simp...