A book I found more interesting after discussions at my book club, so I deem it good material for discussion and disagreement. A purely logical engineer, who believes in the tangible world and his control of it, falls into a mid-life malaise on a airplane trip, reverses his plans, and ends up mining back through his life with unexpected and mythic results. Beautifully written, but I wasn't and still am not sure what I think of the man and the journey. ( )

This story is about the failure of a modern man in a modern society. In a world full of science and rationality, Mr Faber has no reason to believe in fate and determinism. It seems that he can explain everything; god is dead and human is a machine of weak construction. However, his philosophy of life changes drastically when it turns out his daughter is not only still alive, but that he is also currently in love with her. The stream of consciousness, probably the best you will get besides the obvious Woolf and Joyce, renders the change of perspective Mr Faber is going through perfectly. When he finally realizes his thorough loss to logic and wants to change, it is already too late.

If you look for a novel that stands for German modern literature, this is the one to go. ( )

German

I read this in my twenties, it depressed the heck out of me, but I didn't want to stop reading. I suspect that, were I to read it now (many years later), Walter's mid-life crisis would hit home even more strongly...and probably depress me even more. :-)

A previous reviewer made mention of a romantic comedy. I can't imagine a categorization any further from what I found. If anything, this is a Greek tragedy, full of all of the irony and inevitable despair of that genre.

I can't say much about the writing style. I read this in German, which is not my native language nor am I fluent, and the mental translation process prevented any ability to assess that aspect of the book. ( )

This book would have been very easy to read in just a few hours. I liked the prose, however, so I decided to take my time.

Walter Faber, the protagonist, is an existential, pragmatic engineer. He is mainly concerned with how things (machines mostly)work. He doesn't know about art and he isn't moved by experiences that move other people. He also doesn't care that he doesn't know about art or that he's not moved by what moves other people. He wouldn't even mention anything about it if he hadn't found himself in a situation where he was forced to think about it: he meets a young girl who he falls in love with over the course of about five days and she drags him to all sorts of museums and they watch sunsets together and have simile contests.

Don't think, however, that this is a romantic comedy. Far from it. I think I only laughed once. I won't give away any of the plot: Frisch does that for you in the first 10 pages anyway so that there are no surprises. You know everything from the beginning. The intrigue comes from watching Faber's alien mind at work.

I saw the Volker Schlondorf movie adaptation of this book a long time ago. I don't remember if I liked it or not. It's only available on VHS and it's out of print or else it'd be in my netflix queue. I do remember that Sam Shepard and Julie Delpy were the leads so they're who I pictured as I read, which worked quite well. ( )